


Where the Day Begins

by HoneySempai



Series: A Cord of Three Strands [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: At least it’s not all of them, Clothes, Depression, F/F, F/M, Family, Gen, Gender Nonconforming Bucky Barnes, I watched way too much As The World Turns, It's a soap opera up in here, Letters, M/M, Makeup, Multi, New Year's Eve, Nonbinary Bucky Barnes, Other, Phone Calls & Telephones, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queerphobia, Vietnam War, Why do I keep torturing Bucky with shitty extended family members, art deco, recovery is not linear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-02-04 07:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12766185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneySempai/pseuds/HoneySempai
Summary: Bucky closes out the old year with his new family.





	1. Gotta Get to Her

**Author's Note:**

> Well hello! I probably should not be starting another WIP but, much like with On Them Light Has Shined, this is a holiday fic and I want to have it completed and posted by New Year’s Eve. 
> 
> This entry in the Zooropa series is based on the song “[Lemon](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iJYyPLKJcFc)”. If you’re a big U2 fan like me, you know that a handful of their songs, including “Lemon”, memorialize Bono’s mother, who died when he was 14. “Lemon” specifically was inspired by watching an old home movie in which she wore the titular _lemon_ -colored bridesmaid dress. 
> 
> At the same time, I’m rather interested in how Bucky’s extended family through his sister would react to him, and he to them. And hence, this story was born.
> 
>  
> 
> **TW: mentions of torture. Also contains spoilers for _Vorsprung durch Technik_ and _Sound and Color Under My Control_.**
> 
>  
> 
> Quick family tree: Rebecca Barnes married David Proctor, and Martin Proctor is their son. Sandra is Martin’s wife, and Scott and Kim are his kids. Amy is Scott’s wife; Jen is Kim’s wife, and Rikki is their daughter.

~~Dear~~ To the Proctor family,

I hope this letter finds you well. 

~~I don’t know what to write~~ I am sorry that it has taken so long to write. I didn’t provide my actual name and return address on the envelope because I did not want to risk the letter being tampered with, but my name is James Buchanan Barnes. I’m Rebecca’s older brother.

You probably know who else I ~~am~~ was.

It’s been a couple months since I was freed from Hydra and I am, with help, regaining my memories of life prior to ~~being brainwashed~~ ~~being taken prisoner~~ the war. I don’t have a lot of clear memories just yet, but I do have a few of Rebecca. Steve and Peggy - you know them as Captain America and Agent Carter - tell me that my sister and I were extremely close. Steve says that the three of us - he, Rebecca, and I - were “inseparable” as kids, and Peggy told me that when I received Rebecca’s letter that she had gotten married in December of 1942, I cried because I wasn’t there to see the wedding. I don’t remember that, but I can believe it - I’ve been told that I ~~was~~ am an emotional guy. 

They also told me about all of you. It is very strange for me to imagine that I have extended family, and I’m sure that it’s even stranger for you, to be hearing from me. I hope it is all right that I’m writing to you - I would understand if you did not want to hear from me. 

I know that Rebecca passed away several years ago, but I would truly love to get to know my sister’s family, and if you are comfortable with that, I’ve included the return address, as well as a phone number that I can be reached at, on the back of this page.

Thank you,  
James Barnes

*

“Is this okay?” Bucky asks, shoving the letter in Steve’s direction. “Without all the cross-outs, obviously; I’m gonna rewrite it so it looks neat, but do you think it’s okay to send?”

“Lemme actually read it before I give my opinion, Buck,” Steve laughs, taking the letter from his hand. 

“That’s new; Steve deferring on giving an opinion,” Peggy muses as she stands behind him, a plate of scrambled eggs in her hand; Steve swats backwards at her, and gets elbowed in the head in retaliation, before both of them still so as to read the letter. 

“It’s stupid,” Bucky decrees, after ten seconds of thoughtful silence. 

“No, Buck, it’s fine,” Steve hastens to assure. 

“What am I supposed to write?” Bucky continues, as if Steve hadn’t spoken. 

“Well, yes, what _are_ you supposed to write?” Peggy says gently. “It’s an...an awkward situation, darling. Of course you’re going to feel silly.”

“What did you—” Bucky starts, before cutting himself off, looking mildly stricken. 

Peggy pauses; after a beat she remembers to smile, so Bucky doesn’t think he upset her, but she takes another second to gather her thoughts. 

“It’s not quite the same,” she says, finally taking a seat with her breakfast. “You know I had Sharon to...to prepare him, as best as he can be prepared.” She tries not to stab her fork into her eggs too forcefully. “And I met him in person first; I didn’t...contact him beforehand. I’m afraid I’m not much help, darling.”

Bucky nods miserably as Steve reaches over, picks up Peggy’s free hand, and kisses her knuckles. 

“Honestly, Buck, I think this is fine,” Steve says, brandishing the letter with his own free hand. 

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, and before Steve can answer, “You think they’ll be...receptive?”

Steve hesitates before answering. “I don’t know, Buck. We never...we never got hold of them.” It had taken a long time for Steve to bring himself to try to call David, and when two attempts went to voicemail he hastily gave up. No one from the family had shown up to the reception at the White House back in 2011, either, but hardly any of their loved one’s descendants had been able to attend, so it didn't necessarily mean anything. “And I mean, we hardly knew David back then, anyway; Becks didn’t like us hanging around them too much. And you and I were a little preoccupied, in any case.”

Peggy snorts loudly. 

“We were _working_ , ya dirty bird,” Steve scolds playfully, and indeed when Rebecca first met David, Bucky had already enlisted and was off at Basic, and Steve was making up for refusing to let the Barnes put him through art school with taking whatever WPA projects he could get. 

“How come she didn’t want us hanging around them?” Bucky asks, a suspicious frown appearing on his face. 

“Because of _that_ ,” Steve laughs, gesturing to Bucky’s expression. “The Guard Dog Glare.”

Bucky makes a face at him, and then frowns again. He doesn’t remember glaring anyone in particular down; all he has regarding his sister’s possible relationships is a vague sense of no one being good enough for her, just on principle. 

“You were a good big brother,” Steve says, a little softer now. “Kept the creeps away.” Bucky flashes him a grateful smile that’s gone a bit too soon, and Steve sets the letter on the table and pushes it back towards him. “I really think this is fine for a first-time, reaching-out letter, Buck. I don’t think there’s anything else you should write. Or really _could_ write.”

Bucky glances at Peggy, who nods her agreement, and then looks down at the letter, chewing his lower lip. It doesn’t feel like much of anything for a month’s worth of worrying and wasting paper, but if he could be brave enough to not only leave the Tower but appear on TV last month, _this_ month he could certainly be brave enough to finally send a letter to his own damn family no matter how brief it was. 

“Eat first,” Peggy says, gesturing at the cooling, neglected plate Bucky had pushed to the side while he read and re-read his own writing. “You’ll feel less jittery.”

“Yes ma’am,” Bucky mutters, but good-naturedly; he ends up inhaling his food and then hustling back to the studio-cum-office space for a fresh piece of paper. 

He completes the final copy without a single mistake, and it bolsters him enough to go down to the street and drop off the letter in an honest-to-God mailbox (“The Last of the Snail Mailboxes,” Tony had called the nearby, ancient contraption that had somehow survived the Chitauri attack, wiping away an imaginary tear) all by himself. It’s a far cry from how he was in May, when Peggy had asked him to jot down a grocery list for her, and it unnerved him so much that he snapped the pen in half with his flesh hand.

Hydra had allowed him to _read_ , since it was sometimes necessary, but he hadn’t actually _written_ anything in decades. Writing required the author to self-critique; to edit, to reflect. To question. That wouldn’t do for the weapon they were trying to create. His thoughts needed to be immediate, rooted in the present; his inner language one of accepting orders and confirming successes before being put away for however many months or years. His mission reports were always given orally, and recorded by someone else; when needed, his handlers took care of any written messages to liaisons, as well. 

Dimly he recalls a sickly-lit concrete room, a shackle on his right wrist tethering his arm to a desk; being made to pick up a pen and try to write, over and over, so someone could whip his hand with the buckle end of a belt every time he did so. That must have been in the 50s, or maybe the late 40s; sometime long before he was given his metal arm and cleared for field work. Back when such treatment was necessary, to quash defiance. 

He counts himself lucky that he wasn’t terribly advanced in terms of pride when he had to be taught how to set pencil to paper again. He tries not to count himself as unlucky that being able to write a few paragraphs with only a lingering sense of dread, rather than an active one, is a point of pride nowadays.

He hurries back inside before anyone can get a good look at his face, guarded as it is by a brimmed hat and upturned jacket collar, but at least he asked Steve and Peggy to stay on their floor, instead of accompanying him to the street or even just downstairs. 

Their reward for his nerve manages to keep his mind off the letter. For a little bit, at least.

*

”We’re here.”

Rikki walks into the house ahead of her mothers, shedding her coat and dropping it onto the couch. Amy comes into the living room from the kitchen just a moment before Jen can scold her daughter to pick up her coat and hang it up neatly, and beats her to it. 

“I mean really, Rikki, were you born in a barn?” Amy presses even as Rikki does as bade, with her cheese-grater tone that hurts Kim’s teeth to hear it. “Would you like some hay?”

"I don't think that's necessary, Amy," Jen mutters. Rikki, for her part, says nothing, just stomps pass her aunt to throw herself onto the Queen Anne that had just days ago been almost continually occupied by her great-grandfather. The force makes the chair rock backwards off its front feet, and it comes back down to rights with a loud _fwump_.

“Rikki!" Amy snaps. "Be careful with that!”

“She’s _fine_ , Amy,” Jen says, through gritted teeth, as Rikki curls miserably into a ball. 

“We brought in the mail,” Kim cuts in before anything else can be exchanged between her wife and her sister-in-law. Sandra has followed Amy into the living room, and Kim holds up the small stack of letters that her parents had been too distracted to bring in themselves. “Brought in the mail,” she repeats.

“Thank you, Kimberley,” Sandra says; Scott calls “Hey Ames?” from within the kitchen and Amy turns, her huff muted but obviously still present, to go to her husband. “Could you just sort it for me? I’m setting the table.”

“Sure thing, Mom,” Kim says, as Sandra turns to go back, and Jen briefly squeezes her wife’s shoulders as she helps her take her coat off. 

“Kimmy, hey there sweetheart.” Martin’s stuck his head through the doorway, and Kim waves at her father with a dim smile. “Anything interesting?” he asks, nodding at the letters in her hand. 

“Um...” On one of the bookshelves is a wooden letter-holder that Sandra and Scott had built and Kim had painted in the mid-80s, and it’s in this that she begins depositing the mail in slots according to its purpose. “Bill...bill...credit card offer...begathon letter...this...is the neighbor’s mail; I’ll go run it over later. And...” She regards the final envelope in her hand with a frown. “I don’t know what this is, besides an actual letter.”

“Who’s it from?”

“Uh...Jacob Gerst?” Kim says, as Jen comes up behind her, fitting her chin over Kim’s shoulder and looking on. “It’s _for_ Grandpa,” she continues, with a little squeeze around her heart. 

“I don’t recognize the name,” Martin muses, stepping fully into the living room. 

“One of his war buddies?” Kim suggests, and Martin shrugs. They thought they had sent announcements to everyone in David’s address books, but there had been many of them and they were disorganized to boot; one could have slipped throught the cracks. “D’you want me to open it?”

Martin pauses for a moment, and then nods. “If it’s someone who doesn’t know, we should...get back to them immediately.”

Kim bites her lip, and reaches out to squeeze her father’s arm. He had lost his mother back in 1998, and she can tell that the not unexpected but sudden death of his father has not only cut a fresh wound, but torn the old one open. 

Martin pats her hand, cuing her to let go, and Kim slips her now-free finger under the envelope flap and tears it open. 

“ _To the Proctor family, I hope this letter finds you well,_ ” she recites, modulating her voice to stand in for the writer’s. “ _I am sorry that it has taken so long to write. I didn’t provide my actual name and return address on the envelope because I did not want to risk the letter being tampered with, but my name is Ja-..._ ”

Her mouth hangs open for a moment as she stares at the letter, taking in the words but not quite registering them, before she looks up at Martin. “This is from...this is Grandma’s brother.”

"It's who?" Martin asks, blinking.

"Grandma's brother," Kim repeats, dazed.

“Oh my God,” Jen murmurs. 

“No way." Martin holds his hand out, but winds up almost snatching the letter out of Kim's hand when she holds it out to him.

"Guys, can you come here, please?" Kim calls, as her father skims the letter, glaring at it all the while.

“Why, what’s up?” Scott asks; as the closest to the doorway, he was best suited to inquire. 

“Grandma’s brother wrote to us,” Kim says, like she still doesn’t quite believe it herself. 

“You’re sh—kidding me,” Scott says, only just remembering the young ears in the room, and Kim shakes her head. “Well what for? What’s he want?”

“He wants to meet us,” Martin says; Sandra and Amy are crowding behind Scott, drawn in by the commotion. “Or...talk to us, or something. He left a phone number. Look.”

“Who is this now?” Sandra asks, as her husband shoves the letter in her direction; no one answers, and no one has to once she scans the opening paragraph. “Oh my God...”

Amy yanks the letter out of her mother-in-law's hand, her eyes going wider and her jaw dropping further with every paragraph she reads, until her expression is almost a caricature of a human face when she looks up. "Well what are we going to do? We're not going to...write him back or anything, are we? We said we weren't going to contact him."

" _You guys_ decided you weren't going to reach out," Jen says, slow enough to be pointed. "But if he's reaching out first..."

"That doesn't matter," Amy snaps. "That shouldn't matter. It's still...it's not like him writing first _changes_ anything. Right?" she directs at her father-in-law. " _Right?_ "

"...No," Martin says; his hand drifts towards his daughter-in-law, and she sets the letter in his palm. "It shouldn’t. It doesn't."

"Mart—" Jen begins.

"Good," Amy interrupts, a hint of triumph in her eyes. "Good. This is probably a prank, anyway. Why would we write to us now? It's been months since he...since the whole Triskelion thing."

“Maybe he only just remembered us, remembered Grandpa, I mean,” Kim says, still sounding dazed. “I mean, he _has_ memory loss, we know that...”

“Doesn’t he have his...his Captain America and Agent Carter to tell him about us? What, did they keep us from him?”

"It probably took him awhile to work up the...the strength to write," Jen says. "I mean, think about it. This was probably really difficult for him, don't you think? With all the adjusting he's had to do just in everyday life--"

“He seemed adjusted enough when he was on the news last month,” Amy snaps. “A little _too_ adjusted, if you ask me.”

Kim thinks that he actually looked small and wan and more than a little daunted, sitting between Captain America and Agent Carter and letting them do most of the talking. She also thinks their emphatic anger at having their privacy invaded, the implications of that, are dangling right over Amy’s head, just out of her reach. 

None of that comes out, and it doesn’t have to, because Jen can feel it rattling around in her wife’s brain and says it for her. “That has nothing to do with anything, Amy.”

“Ames has a point, though,” Scott interrupts. “This _could_ be a prank. Or a...”

“A what?” Martin prompts, even though Scott looks like he’s regretting his own thoughts. 

“A trap.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Amy moans.

“I doubt it’s a trap,” Sandra says, setting her hand reassuringly on Amy's shoulder. “If Hydra or somebody were after us I don't think they’d go about it like this.”

“And you’re a Hydra expert all of a sudden?” Amy demands, rounding on her mother-in-law.

“ _Ames_...” Scott starts, as his mother’s expression melts into hurt. 

“What?” Amy snaps. 

“Be nice. Please.”

"It's all right, Scotty," Sandra says, not meeting anyone's gaze as she waves both her hands dismissively. "Amy's just...on edge, is all."

"I am," Amy confirms. "I am on edge."

"It's been a...a trying couple of days," Sandra continues. "I think we should just...sit down, and eat, and just...pretend like we never got the letter. Mail gets lost all the time."

"So you're gonna ghost him?" Jen asks, raising her eyebrows.

"What part of having no contact escapes you, Jen?" Amy asks, forcing her voice into something facetious-sounding only at the last minute.

"Okay, you know what, Amy?"

"All right, that's enough," Martin says before Jen can continue, moving to put himself more solidly between his daughters-in-law. "I’m burying my father tomorrow," he continues, brandishing the letter at Jen before stuffing it into the letter-holder. "We are not reopening this discussion right now."

Jen is more than ready to retort that the discussion was never really _open_ to begin with, and Kim grabs her hand before she can, squeezing it in a bid for her compliance, at least for right now.

"Well. Well let me...make sure that dinner isn't burned," Sandra says. "Girls, if you could come help me...?"

Amy still looks sickly anxious, but as she turns to follow Sandra there’s the barest hint of a smirk on her mouth that Jen’s jaw and fist clenches at. Kim's grip on her wife tightens, and Jen traps her irritation behind pinched lips and bit tongue, expressing her displeasure instead by throwing her purse roughly onto the couch before shuffling into the kitchen behind Kim. Scott and Martin follow a moment later, in search of a distracting, minor chore to perform.

Rikki waits until everyone has vacated the living room and the kitchen is filled with the sounds of small favors being asked and plates clinking against each other before she crawls out of the Queen Anne and goes to Jen’s purse; she saw her birthmother put in the passcode to her phone once, and memorized it. Then she scurries over to the letter-holder, standing on her tiptoes to reach the cause of all this commotion. Luckily she gets the letter without toppling the whole piece, and with both her gains in hand she tucks herself into the entrance of the hallway leading down to the other end of the house. 

Rikki's Number 1 rule is that no one is mean to anyone in her presence and gets away without some comeuppance. _Especially_ not Aunt Amy.

*

Steve, Peggy, and Bucky are watching a rerun of _Dharma &Greg_ when Bucky’s phone rings.

It freezes them for a moment, through the second ring, before Steve and Peggy pull away from Bucky to let him trip forward off the couch, to the coffee table a few feet in front of them, where he made himself leave his phone instead of clutching it in his hand all night, like he has been for the past few days. 

“Hello?” gets caught in his throat, and he has to clear it before he tries again. “Hello?”

“Hello,” responds the polished voice of a young child imitating the adult phone conversations she’s overheard. “Can I speak to...” Rikki looks at the piece of paper in her hand again, “James Buh-chan-an Barnes, please?” 

“...Speaking,” Bucky says slowly; he adjusts himself on the floor so he sits fully, his back turned to the paused TV and his befuddled gaze levied at Steve and Peggy. 

“Hello,” Rikki says again. She hadn’t quite planned this far ahead. 

“Can I ask who’s calling me?” Bucky asks, as Steve and Peggy lean forward to try to hear better. 

“Oh, my name’s Rikki,” the girl supplies cheerfully, and Bucky loses his breath for a moment. SHIELD had acquired information on the Proctor family for Steve and Peggy three years ago, between finding them in the ice and their actual return to consciousness two months later; barring this being a crank call, Bucky is speaking to his great-great-niece. 

“Well hey there, Rikki,” Bucky says, also imitating someone; the news footage of Steve and Peggy interacting with children after an averted crisis or during a PR event. “It’s, it’s nice to hear from you.”

“We got your letter,” Rikki says, after a beat of not knowing what else to say. 

“Oh yeah?” Bucky responds, automatically. “Well thanks for...for calling me back.”

“You’re welcome,” Rikki says blithely, and then there’s a noise in the background that, though dim, sounds a lot to Bucky like _Rikki? Who are you talking to?_

“No one!” Rikki calls back, and then all sounds go muffled and loud at the same time, as Bucky figures the phone is being wrestled away from Rikki by a parent. He bites his lip as it happens, looking up at his partners worriedly, and Peggy slides off the couch to sit next to him, putting her hand on his shoulder. 

Kim holds Rikki out of the way with one hand as the girl tries to grab the phone out of the other. Even without having memorized the number left on the back of the letter she knows who Rikki called—and why—and it’s confirmed in her gut when the voice on the other end of the line says “Hello?”

“Hang up!” Amy hisses, and the urge to comply is a pressing one. Dad had decreed months ago that he wouldn’t be attempting to contact his uncle, and the others shouldn’t either. They didn’t know the man, after all, and given his history he posed an unacceptable risk to the family, besides.

It was a wholly logical stance to take, and when she coupled it with what she suspected were Martin's other reasons, it made a compelling argument. Kim had accepted it, and had gotten Jen to accept it as well, despite her objections. Martin stands a few feet behind her now, asking her with his eyes to accept it once again.

“Hello?” comes again, quieter, from the other side, and Kim’s thumb, hovering over the red button, drops to the side as she brings the phone up to her ear. 

“Hello?” Kim says, cringing at the muted, flailing anger coming at her from her sister-in-law. 

Bucky’s heart starts beating in his ears, now that it’s restarted. “Hi, yes, I...can I ask who I'm speaking to?”

“I...” Kim looks blindly, frantically back at her family; Jen is smiling at her, and she clings to that support like a lifeline. “Um. My name is Kim Proctor. Proctor-Lloyd. I take it this is...?”

“Sergeant James Buh-chan-an Barnes, at your service,” Bucky laughs, maybe slightly heady; Steve sits down on the floor on the other side of Peggy, resting a hand on his leg. 

“Oh, it’s...it’s pronounced...?”

“Oh, no, that’s...Rikki said it that way, when she called. It was...it was cute, I thought it was funny.” 

“ _Oh_ , oh. I see.” She manages a weak chuckle. “Well, that’s...entirely reasonable for a six-year-old, to think it’s pronounced that way.”

“Yeah.” There’s a pause, as both of them cast their minds about for something to say; Bucky finds something first. “So you, um...you got my letter.”

“Yeah! Yeah, just now actually. I opened it, I...we thought you might have been a friend of Grandpa’s. He...Grandpa just, he just passed away. A few days ago.”

“Oh. Oh, crap...I’m sorry.” Steve elbows him lightly; Bucky turns his head and whispers “David died” before putting his mouth back to the receiver. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea...”

“No, no, it’s all right. It was...it was just a few days ago. It was very sudden. The viewing was this morning, and we’re all...at the house, his house, now, and obviously the mail hasn’t been stopped yet, so...yeah.”

“Who all is there?” Bucky asks, unable to stop himself, wanting at least a mental picture. 

“It’s...well, it’s everyone, there’s...my parents, Martin and Sandra...” Amy looks ready to kill her, so she compromises, “my brother and his wife, and...well then there’s me, Kim, and my wife Jen, and our daughter. Rikki.”

She doesn’t quite know how to read his silence—despite his extremely public coming-out, she’s met plenty of queer men who labored under an astonishing lack of self-awareness, and consequently espoused their disdain for queer women quite readily—and it’s a relief, however irrational, when the noise he makes sounds overwhelmed instead of disgusted. 

“So is she...is Rikki named for...?”

“Grandma?” she supplies when he trails off. “Yeah. Grandma and I...we were very close,” she continues, and Bucky can hear the sad smile tugging at the corners of Kim’s mouth. “She was basically my best friend my whole life, right up until she passed away,” Kim says, taking the phone away from her ear and pressing the speaker button when it lights up. If her family is going to decide to continue to avoid this man, it should be an informed choice. 

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, his throat suddenly gaining a hard, painful lump. “Apparently she was, apparently she was my best friend, too. That’s what Steve tells me, anyway.”

It occurs to Kim that Captain America might very well be listening in on this conversation. Suddenly she feels a little light-headed. “So of course I, I had to name my daughter after her. Her middle name’s Victoria, for Jen’s grandmother. So it matches.”

“That’s, that’s...great, that’s really wonderful, Kim.” He looks at Steve and Peggy, who give him anxious, encouraging smiles. “Rikki seems...she seems precocious.” That’s one of his favorite words, from the vocabulary he’s rebuilt; it makes him inordinately glad to be able to apply it to a relative. 

“She is,” Kim says, with a laugh that’s both genuine and still flustered with being put on the spot; Rikki has stomped to the bathroom and shut herself in, to sulk. “Always, always getting into everything. She’s a real tomboy, too. She’s on us to build her a treehouse now, in the middle of November. Says that now’s the time to do it, ‘cause there’re no leaves in the way.”

“Well, she’s got a point.”

“Oh God, don’t encourage her. She’s in the other room, but she’s got the ears of a bat.”

“I’ll keep my voice down,” Bucky manages to laugh; it fades into quiet for a moment, before he plucks up his nerve again. “Does she...how much does Rikki know about me?”

“Um.” Kim winces. “A little...? I don’t...I don’t think she was paying much attention in, back in April, when...that all happened.”

“Good. Good, I wouldn’t want her to...that’s, that’s that’s a lot, for a little kid.”

 _That’s a lot for **you**_ , Kim thinks, but she only manages an “Mmm. She just...I think the only thing she _does_ know is that her great-grandmother has a brother who we haven’t met yet.”

“Yet?” Bucky can’t stop himself from asking.

Kim freezes, casting a panicked gaze around the room, being met with equally stricken expressions from her family. When she flails for just a beat too long, she can almost hear Bucky’s face fall.

“It’s okay. Like I said in the, the letter, I get it if—”

“We have to discuss it,” Kim blurts out. “Wh-when we could, possibly, um...arrange to...to see you.” She cringes mightily underneath the glares sent her way, unconsciously making a high-pitched noise that Bucky picks up on.

“All-all right,” he says, as blithely diplomatic as he can make himself sound. “Well, if...I’m at Avengers Tower pretty much full-time, so my schedule’s open for the...the foreseeable future.”

“Okay. Duly noted. I’ll...we’ll talk about it.”

“All right. Um...you can call whenever; I’ll pick up.”

“Okay.”

“...Well, I’ll, I guess I’ll let you go now, since you’re all...I’m real sorry about, about your grandfather. I...I wish I remembered him. I’m sure he was a good man.”

“Thank you. He was.”

“It was really good talking to you, Kim; you and Rikki,” he says, quickly, before he loses his opening. “I’m...I’m glad I got the chance to.”

“Well me too,” Kim says, softly. “Hopefully we can...do it again, soon. Sometime.”

“Yeah. That’d be...that’d be really great.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Um...’bye now, I guess.”

She gets a soft laugh out of herself. “Good-bye.”

They’re both shaking as they hang up their respective phones, and when Amy hisses “I can’t believe you just did that,” it’s almost as if Bucky can hear it, because he stares at his phone and mumbles, wet and broken, “I don’t think they want to see me.”

“Well what was she supposed to do?” Jen demands, as Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand and Peggy urges him to just give it a little time. “Hang up on him?”

“Yes! Hang up! Say we don’t want to talk to him! Not all but set up a _playdate_ with him!”

“I’m sorry, _who_ gets to decide who Kim talks to? Beause all this time I’ve been under the impression that it was _Kim_.”

“We decided _as a family_ that it wasn’t a good idea.” 

" _We_ did no such thing. Kim and I both wanted to reach out to him. It was _you all_ who insisted we shouldn’t."

"Because we'd be threatening the safety of this family if we did!" Amy yelps, as Kim looks at her hands.

“You’ve _seen_ the man. You all _heard_ him, just now. When exactly did he threaten us at all?”

“It’s not just that, Jen, you know that,” Scott cuts in. “We don’t want to...want to draw any undue attention to ourselves.”

"But we’re _already out there_. If Hydra’s gonna come for us, they’re gonna do it no matter what, you know? It doesn't matter how _we_ feel about him; it only matters that we're related. The only thing we’re accomplishing by avoiding this guy is causing him more pain.”

“Well that’s _so_ kind of you,” Amy sneers. “It’d be nice if you expressed some of that concern for your own family.”

"And he's _what_ exactly?" Jen demands.

"He's the _fucking Winter Soldier_ , Jennifer!"

“But he’s Grandma’s brother,” Kim finally gears herself up enough to say. 

“Well, your grandma’s not alive to give a shit, so—”

Martin’s hand slams down against the bookshelf, making the letter-sorter and a loose bookend rattle, and the noise silences all others.

“Amy,” he says, voice low, after a moment, “I will thank you to not speak about my mother that way.”

The glare doesn’t leave her face, but her lips stay tightly pressed together, which is as close to an apology as he can expect from her. 

"All right, everyone," Sandra finally interjects. "Everyone, please. We're all...we're all very emotional right now. Let's just...sit, and calm down, and then we can discuss this rationally later, all right? Can we all agree to do that?"

"Well apparently it doesn't matter what we agree to do," Amy mutters. "Kim and Jen'll do whatever the hell they want regardless."

“ _Amy_ ,” Scott says, low, warning, and Amy makes sure that the roll of her eyes can be seen from space.

“I need a cigarette.”

“Ames—”

“You want me to calm down, Scott? I’m gonna need a friggin’ cigarette.”

She storms past her mother-in-law to the dining room, where she’s left her purse hanging over the back of a chair. She rifles through it almost as loud as she lets the back door slam shut. 

Scott sighs as soon as Amy’s safely out of earshot. Jen hopes he can hear her thinking _hey, you’re the one who married her._

Maybe he does, because his “Kim, you shouldn’t have done that,” comes out tinged with bitterness. 

“I panicked,” Kim says, wilting. “I’m sorry, I just, I couldn’t...”

“Don’t apologize, Kim,” Jen says, calmer now that her sister-in-law has left the room but no less steadfast. “You had every right to talk to him. Amy doesn’t get to dictate which relatives you’re allowed to speak to.”

“But you _knew_ why I didn’t want to...” Martin starts, before a sigh cuts him off. “ _Kim_.”

“Dad—” 

“Kimberley,” Sandra interrupts, quiet. “It might be best if...if you go home now. Just to let...” she tacks on quickly, seeing Jen’s jaw drop, “to let everyone...breathe.”

“Sandy, no, that’s, that’s not necessary,” Martin says. 

“You know what, I think it is,” Jen snaps. 

“Jen, Mom didn’t mean it like that—” Scott starts. 

“Rikki!” Jen yells, loud enough to be heard in the bathroom, even behind a closed door. “We’re leaving!” There’s a beat of noiselessness, and Jen tries again, this time stomping to the bathroom as she commands “Rikki Victoria, get your butt out here _now!_ ”

“You know I didn’t mean it like, like that, Kimberley,” Sandra says quietly.

The short, high noise Kim makes in response is many things. Reassured is not one of them.

“It’s just that your father...this is very difficult for him, and...” She clears her throat, her hands folding over each other. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

Kim doesn’t say anything, only turns away, to gather their coats and bags. She still hasn’t thought of anything _to_ say by the time Jen marches Rikki, a little shamefaced but mostly still shit-eating, back into the living room. 

“We’ll see you guys tomorrow,” Scott attempts, somewhat valiantly. “Delia’s, 2pm.”

“We haven’t forgotten,” Jen says crisply, opening Rikki’s coat for the girl to stick her arms through. She plucks her own coat out of Kim’s hands and hangs it back up for just a moment, to assist Kim with hers, and only has one arm in one sleeve by the time she yanks the front door open with her free hand. She doesn’t slam it shut—those sorts of histrionics are Amy’s domain as far as she’s concerned—but she does close it with more force than normal. 

“I’ll get it,” Jen says, when Kim goes to the back passenger side door, to help Rikki into her carseat. “I’ll take care of it, baby,” she modifies, less angry, setting her hand on Kim’s back. “You go sit down.”

Kim takes up the offer wordlessly, and Jen shushes their daughter when she asks “Is Ma okay?” She clicks Rikki into her seat all business-like—that tells Rikki that she should be quiet even more than an express demand or overt yelling would—and is brisk about coming around the front of the car and sliding into the driver’s seat. Kim, for her part, has rested her elbow on the windowsill and her chin in her fist, her eyes tightly shut, and she doesn’t stir when Jen starts the car. 

“I’m sorry, Inna,” Rikki mumbles, about two and a half blocks from the house. 

“And what’re you sorry for, Rikki?” Jen prompts. 

“Using your phone without asking.”

It takes all of Jen’s resolve not to laugh at Rikki’s total lack of remorse over upsetting her aunt. “All right, Rikki. I forgive you.”

“I shoulda hung up on him,” Kim says suddenly, her hand dropping away from her face.

“No, baby, you shouldn’t have,” Jen says, gently. 

“I coulda called him back later. When we were home. They didn’t have to. To see me do it.”

Jen reaches for Kim’s hand, still and clenched in her lap, and brings it up and over, so she can kiss her knuckles. 

“Grandpa _just_ died. Everyone’s so upset, and...I shouldn’t’ve...”

“Baby.” Jen rests their hands carefully on top of the gear shift, rubbing her thumb over Kim’s knuckles. “No matter what you do, you are _never_ gonna please them.”

A short, sharp breath escapes Kim’s mouth, before she bites her lip, her face scrunching up.

“I liked him,” Rikki announces, hoping it’ll help. “He was nice.”

“Yeah, Rikki?” Kim makes herself ask through the tightness in her throat. “And you were nice to him back, right?”

“Mmhmm!”

“It was very sweet, Kim, the way you spoke with him,” Jen continues, taking her hand away for a moment, to make a turn, before returning it to her wife. “Talking about your grandma and all. I’m sure he appreciated it.”

Kim nods, willing herself to accept the praise. Jen tries, and while that doesn’t fill the void, it at least builds a tower next to it. “Well. Gotta be hard for him, right?”

“God, I can’t even imagine how much.”

They have some idea. They’d read his leaked files, in fits and starts; Jen too open-hearted to read it all at once, and Kim too compromised. Grandma had spoken volumes about the man, after all; enough for five-year-old Kim to conjure up an imaginary friend in his image, and the world he and Grandma had built together for their play-pretend radio series in the 20s had transformed Kim’s childhood backyard into a nation called Zooropa that she vigorously defended from the Kaiser long before she ever studied World War I in school.

Kim thinks Martin has read the whole thing, too. Sandra and Scott, probably only pieces. Part of her thinks— _hopes_ —that Amy hasn’t read any of it. Ignorance could excuse or at least explain callousness. 

“You know, Kim, we got no plans for New Year’s,” Jen says musingly, after a moment. “If you can get the time off—”

“Honey, let me talk to the man more than once before we go running off to Manhattan to meet him,” Kim giggles. 

“Well hey, I’m just saying. I’ve never been to New York at all. It might be fun to go there this year, see the ball drop in real time...and if we happen to run into him, well then. Serendipity.”

It’s Kim’s turn to kiss her wife’s hand, though she turns it around to get to her palm, and she smiles into its heel. 

“Let me talk to him more than once before we go running off to Manhattan,” she says again, less pained now; more sure-footed.

“Anything you need, baby,” Jen says, and Kim presses their hands to her heart, as if to say she knows, and appreciates more than she can express, that Jen provides it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ProTip: Dharma&Greg is very good at cheering you up when the melancholy sets in.
> 
> “[Inna](http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2014/09/words-for-father-mother-in-various.html?m=1)” is the term for “mother” used by the Fula tribe in Gambia. A good chunk of slaves that were brought to North America were from the region known today as Gambia, and Jen is descended from those people.


	2. See the World Outside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: heteropatriarchy; homo-, bi- and polyam-phobia, including the use of slurs, outdated/wrong views of how sexual orientation works, and respectability politics; misogyny; possibly some implied racism depending on how you interpret later chapters; mentions of various wars between 1989 and 2009; mild ableist language

“Sandy?”

“Mmhmm?” Sandra hum-calls back. The bathroom door stands closed between them, Sandra taking care of her pre-bed ablutions, Martin shifting his weight from one foot to another and occasionally assessing himself in the hallway mirror. 

“You didn’t have to...you really shouldn’t have sent Kim away, hon.”

Something glass clinks on the other side of the door. 

“I thought it was best for everyone,” Sandra says, straightforward, the thinnest layer of frost coating her words. “Amy was very upset, and you _know_ what she gets like, especially with Jennifer around. That fight would’ve carried on all evening.”

“No, hon, I know why you did it; I’m not mad.”

He hears the water turn on, and then sharply turn off two seconds later. 

“And you _told_ Kimberley you didn’t want—” 

“Sandy, honey. I’m not mad,” Martin says, insistent now.

Sandra is silent for a moment and then spits, loudly; she must be brushing her teeth. 

“It’s just that...y’know, I _was_ upset with Kim, but...well, you know how she’s a soft touch, always has been. And Rikki put her in an awkward position.”

“They need to discipline that child better.”

“Yeah, they really do,” Martin laughs. “What happens when there’s no man in the house.”

Sandra opens the door smiling. He takes a moment to slide his arms around his wife’s shoulders and kiss her cheek; she hums pleasedly before stepping to the side, to let him in the bathroom.

“We’ll talk to them tomorrow,” Martin says, leaving the door open as he goes to the sink. “You should probably apologize to—Sandy?”

“Went back to the bedroom!” Sandra calls, from a few steps away from it, and Martin sighs. He hurries his way through brushing his teeth and power-walks into the bedroom. Sandra has already gotten in bed, but she's sitting up against the pillows, waiting for him.

"I was saying," Martin picks up, sliding into bed and kissing his wife's cheek before he offers something unpalatable to her, "you really should apologize to Kim tomorrow, hon."

Sandra doesn't look at him except through her peripheral vision, regarding the comforter laying over her legs for a long moment instead. Finally she slides down the bed in an abrupt movement, turning on her side and hunkering down under the covers. "All right, Marty. If you think it's best."

"I really do, Sandy," Martin says, laying a hand on her shoulder in a way that he hopes is mollifying. She _hm_ s in response and doesn't turn over again; just lightly, briefly pats his hand with her own. He draws his hand away from her, after a second, and slides down the headboard, folding his hands over his chest and looking up at the ceiling.

David hadn't cared much for Bucky. Martin figured that out from a young age, whenever Rebecca related a sadly starry-eyed memory from her childhood that ended with singing her older brother's praises, and David would give a little roll of his eyes behind his wife's back. Martin tattled on him once, prompting a fight between his parents, and as part of the making-up David had to, clearly begrudgingly, inform Martin that James Barnes was a war hero who would be shown the respect due to a bearer of that title.

Then when Martin reached his teenage years and David tried to teach him, despite the generation gap, the finer points of wooing girls, a warning was issued to behave himself around his date's brothers, because "Your uncle woulda snapped my neck if he coulda gotten away with it. You see this face," he imitated an exaggerated version of what he recalled Bucky's protective expression looking like, "you watch your step."

Most damning, of course, was when twenty-one-year-old Kim finally gathered her family in the living room and told them about the girlfriend she'd been seeing on the sly for two months at that point, and David shouted at Rebecca that "If Kim's a goddamn lez she gets it from _your_ family!"

"I saw 'em once," David had grumbled in the kitchen after Kim ended the fight by running out of the house in tears; Martin still reeling from his daughter's announcement and searching for a stiff drink. "Your uncle and his...and Steve Rogers. Goddamn Captain America. Fags, the pair of ‘em."

"Dad...what? What are you talking about?"

"My hand to God, Marty. I saw 'em necking in your grandmother's laundry room once. It was the most disgusting thing I ever saw." And later, after liquor had been shared, "I kept my mouth shut for your mom's sake. No one took too kindly to that sorta thing back then. Not like nowadays where you can't throw a stone without hittin' one of these people. I didn't want her to have to live with the shame of people knowin'. Christ, I shoulda said something to you earlier. Maybe we could've avoided this whole mess."

But David had come around, eventually. They all had. Not long after the revelation, Rebecca started showing signs of the disease whose complications would claim her life, and Kim, drawing on whatever spine she had, starting bringing Jen with her to Rebecca's care facility when she went to visit. Sometimes other members of the family would be there already, or come soon after, and Jen would hold her ground, refusing to either leave or refrain from showing Kim affection. They...acclimated, for Rebecca's sake, and by the time she died two years later they had gotten too used to Jen's presence to have much of an active problem with it. (At least until Scott came home with Amy a few years ago.)

Still, it would figure that "your Uncle Bucky" as Rebecca would refer to him (a very young Martin had reasoned that a "your" was an uncle who had died) would contact them within days of David dying. Martin knows it's implausible, but it’s like he knew. And he did it a month after coming out publicly too, as a "bisexual" Martin supposes he is. Personally he thinks the guy should just pick one and stick with it. If you're gay, just stay there and be gay, don't drag a lady into it.

And who the hell does that sort of thing, anyway? Kim insists that just because a person is “bi” doesn’t mean they have threesomes, but there’s “Team America” right there, undermining _that_ argument. And that comment on how they do consider themselves married, all three...that’s not _normal_. God knows he wouldn’t have brought Thuy into his home like that, even if he could’ve, even if he wanted to. It's not...not how things are supposed to be. 

Maybe it's a result of what Hydra did to him, comes uncomfortably creeping into Martin's brain. After all there were, comparatively, hardly any women in Hydra to begin with; none at Kreischberg, and only a handful ever involved directly in the Winter Soldier Project, at least according to those leaked files. And Martin knows some guys who took to women, both _over there_ and back home; looking for a softness to take comfort in that was inherently weaker, more vulnerable, than they felt. It's hard to imagine someone like Peggy Carter letting herself get put in that position, but hey, she's a woman for all that, and it's not like he knows her personally. Maybe she gets her kicks easing the Winter Soldier's [SRS](https://io9.gizmodo.com/5898560/from-irritable-heart-to-shellshock-how-post-traumatic-stress-became-a-disease).

He doesn't want to think too much about that sort of thing. It puts a twisting sensation in his gut and a heaviness in his arms and a vagueness in his brain, all things he’s left and re-left in the late 70s, and none of those things are gonna help him bury his father tomorrow morning. He'd had his Sandy--his wonderful, understanding, heart of gold Sandy--and two kids to get him through; James Buchanan Barnes has his "partners" or whatever the term is nowadays. He'll be fine, even without the Proctors in his life. Sandy will apologize to Kim tomorrow, and that'll put an end to the whole affair.

*

Kim's still in contact with him.

Scott knows this because he knows his sister; knows her ways. You can only shout or scold or scorn Kim into deference for so long; eventually she gathers up her courage and screws it to the sticking place. Quietly, but she does it all the same.

He also knows because the man's clearly texting her right now. He's not looking at her phone, of course, but the flightiness of her movements is a dead giveaway to someone who grew up watching for her tells so he could most effectively tattle on her. Kim had borrowed his and Amy's wafflemaker sometime before David died, and a week after the funeral he's here to collect it. Kim had been fine allowing him into the house and asking him, while he was here, to take a look at a pipe that's been making a weird noise; he had come out of that room with an optimistic prognosis to see her nearly jump out of her skin and clutch her phone to her chest.

"... _Kim..._ "

"It's my decision who I talk to, Scott," Kim says, almost sound 100% firm in that conviction. The shock of that first contact has worn off, and clearly Jen's been encouraging her; also it's only Scott that she has to defend herself against, and she's seen him break a kiddie pool by trying to surf in it. "Not yours or Amy's or Dad's or anyone else's."

It actually _is_ nice to see her stand up for herself. As fun as it was to have a sister who would gamely go along with his plan to see if they could fly by jumping off the kitchen table, it was also a little hard to see Kim wilting under Sandra's cool eye and colder tongue. Scott appreciates the strides she and Jen have made together in this regard. Usually. Except when, he admits to himself, it's inconvenient for him.

"Look, Kim, I get it. I do. You wanna be loyal to Grandma." After all, Grandma was the one who made sure that all of Kim's art projects and report cards got put up on _someone’s_ fridge. Grandma was the one to play dolls, and cars, and make-believe with Kim; even tag and hide-and-seek before she got too arthritic. Of course Kim's first loyalty would be to her, and the brother she was so fond of; Rebecca's mind had clung stubbornly to the memories of her and Bucky and Steve Rogers growing up together in the 30s, to the point where she could still recount sixty-year-old stories accurately in the months leading up to her death.

And hell, Scott loved his grandmother, too. In retrospect, if it felt like Kim was Grandma's "favorite" it was because Rebecca was pulling Sandra’s load; she had always showered Scott with attention, too. But...

"But you know that Amy's right. Grandma died sixteen years ago. She's not around to...be disappointed in you."

"I _know_ that, Scotty," Kim says. "I'm not...doing this to appease her angry ghost, or something. _I want to get to know him._ You don't have to, but I do."

Scott scratches his hairline, sighing. "And what's he got to say that's so compelling?"

Kim hesitates, and pulls her phone away from her chest as if she's afraid he's going to snatch it out of her hand. "Well. He was just showing me _this_." She taps on her screen, and slowly turns the phone around.

It's a picture, an awkward close-up of the metal arm; Scott grabs Kim's hand to steady it, and leans in close. The first thing he sees is a painted replica of the famous Captain America shield; just to the right of it, like it's protruding from the shield, is a stylized wing in pale gold.

"It's, that wing is the insignia of the Howling Commandos," Kim says, pulling her hand back when she's decided she's had enough of trusting Scott. "Captain America's an artist, did you know that?”

“I did not.”

“Yeah, he does drawing and painting, apparently. They painted the shield on his arm a couple months ago, and they did the wing on Veteran's Day. Peggy—Agent Carter—she helped."

"Does he _remember_ being part of the Howling Commandos?"

Kim hesitates again, and grimaces a little. "I don't know." She hadn't really wanted to ask; it felt cruel to do so. "But, obviously they _mean_ something to him. Just like we do."

Scott presses his lips together, and sighs through his nose.

"Scotty..."

"I don’t know, Kim." Her couch is not far away, and he sinks into it. "I mean, Amy's right. How do _you_ know he's...sure he can _act_ like a normal guy, but what if you meet him in person and he just..." He makes a noise and a hand gesture indicating a violent outburst. 

"Oh, come on, Scott."

"Ask Dad if you don't trust me enough." Scott followed the grand Proctor tradition of joining the military, though unlike his father and grandfather he had made a career out of it, retiring after twenty years in 2009. He’s been in Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan (at the same time as the Falcon, and he even briefly met War Machine, no less), and he knows. “Guys come back... _different_ , Kim. Especially the POWs. Of which this guy is, uh, probably the most famous in history.”

“I’m aware.”

“So—”

“But he’s gone like seventh months without an incident—”

“Yeah, that you know of.”

“I’m not...moving into Avengers Tower, Scott! I’m just _talking_ with him.”

“Okay, okay.” Scott puts up his hands and takes a pointed step back.

“And I’m not stupid,” Kim presses. “I _know_ he could, that he’s probably got problems...he’s just...he’s _happy_ to hear from me, Scotty. Really happy. And I mean, _Jesus_ , he’s suffered so much,” her eyes are welling up now, “ _you_ know, you read what happened to him, and we’re the only... _connection_ to Grandma that he’s got left. And I know you all want me to tell him to fuck off but I _can’t_ , Scott, I just can’t.”

“Kim—”

“Scotty, he is _family_.”

That trips him up, catches his tongue. Kim watches him struggle for an argument, the well overflowing in her left eye and spilling over a single stream.

“Aw, Kim,” Scott’s finally able to say. Kim is the little girl who cried when the cat massacred a nest of baby birds and insisted that each one get a proper burial and a little styrofoam headstone, and _he_ is the big brother who bought her a candy bar with the last of his allowance to cheer her up. “C’mon, hey. Kim. Kimmy. Snap-into-a-Kim-Jim.”

“Don’t call me that,” Kim mumbles, wiping at her eyes with the back of her wrist. 

“Kim~ber~” he calls under his breath, and Kim makes a face at him. “Look, Kim, I’m not gonna tell you what to do. You’re a grown woman; you can make your own decisions. I just...I see Amy’s point, and Dad’s. _And_ I see your point, too. And Jen’s. It’s not like I wanna hurt the guy or anything, I know he’s been through hell, I just...I’ve got my wife to think about first, and you guys. I don’t want some crazy dangerous guy coming into our lives and putting us all in jeapordy.”

“I know that, Scott.”

Kim’s phone buzzes, loud in the thin silence between them. She glances sideways at Scott, her phone clutched tightly in her hand, her thumb worrying a crack in the phone case.

It buzzes again, just Bucky indicating that he noticed a typo, but it tugs on her heart, and Scott sees it on her face. 

He stands up, crossing the room to the living room closet, pulls his coat off the hangar, and sighs again. 

“Look, tell him I said hi, okay?”

Kim looks up from where she unconsciously had been looking at the floor. 

“You mean that?”

“Yeah, Kim, I mean it,” Scott says, crossing the room to the front door.

”Scotty—”

”Don’t get all misty-eyed at me,” Scott says, putting his hand on the door knob. “You’re just annoying as hell when you mope.”

“Get the hell out of here,” Kim laughs. Scott makes the G-rated handsign they’d invented to replace the middle finger as kids and leaves before she can respond to Bucky. It feels like plausible deniability, even though it's not.

*

“Oh, Bucky, good morning.”

“‘Mornin’, Pepper.”

“Steve and Peggy around?” Pepper asks, unnecessarily. This is a small kitchenette, designed mainly to be a place to retreat for a brief change of scenery during the workday; there's no real place for anyone to hide.

Bucky shakes his head. “They're asleep.” Steve had come home from a mission sometime during the ungodly hours; Peggy had insisted an insomniac Bucky knock himself out with the sleep aid Thor had brought them from Asgard, only convincing him to do so when she promised to wait up for Steve on his behalf.

"Tony, too," Pepper says, her own boyfriend having been on the same mission. Bucky holds the coffee pot up at her questioningly. “I’d love some, thank you.” She slides into one of the seats at the table, watching Bucky fetch a coffee cup for her and fill both his and hers. “I’ll put my own milk and sugar in; you don't have to. I’ve got a highly specific ratio for getting me through the day.”

“Right, right, sure,” Bucky laughs weakly, bringing both cups to the table and then heading back to the fridge for the milk, and Pepper watches him with a small frown, trying to reconcile the cognitive dissonance between his restless, fidgety presence and what she expected to find when she came downstairs.

“Is everything all right, Bucky?”

“Hm?” His head pops up over the refrigerator door. 

“You’re not normally out of your suite alone.” Bucky hipchecks the door closed. “Not that you’re not _allowed_ to be, of course, I’m just...curious if something’s the matter.”

“I wrote to my family a couple weeks ago,” Bucky says, immediately, without putting too much forethought in it. Pepper’s got an air about her that reminds him of a therapist, and she’s far enough removed from him, in terms of emotional involvement, that compulsively spilling his guts isn’t as nerve-wracking as it is with Steve and Peggy. “My sister’s family.”

“Oh?” Pepper says, carefully neutral in tone and straightening up attentively as Bucky comes to the table and sets the milk on top of it. "Steve mentioned you were going to..." Her work schedule, including frequent flights, had precluded her from inquiring further until now.

“Yeah. I wanted to, wanted...I dunno.” Bucky takes his seat, fiddling with the handle of his cup. “Just...to talk to them, I guess. Get to know them.”

“Meet them?” Pepper asks, dragging the milk he had brought across the tabletop towards her. 

“If I could.”

Pepper knows the amount she wants by muscle memory, so she can watch him as she pours. “Do you think you can’t?”

Bucky shrugs tightly, gathering his thoughts as Pepper spoons sugar into her drink and stirs, not taking her gaze off him. “My...I guess she’s my great-niece, she’s my sister’s granddaughter?”

Pepper nods. "Great-niece. Or grand-niece, depending on who you ask."

“Well, in any case. Her name’s Kim. I’ve talked to her over the phone. A couple times now.”

“Yeah?” Pepper smiles, genuinely delighted for him. “And what’s Kim like?”

“Um. Well, she’s thirty-nine years old; she’s a...” he enunciates every syllable, making it sound impressive, “ _veterinary technician_ at a wolf sanctuary...”

Pepper nods. “So she’s smart, and she likes animals. Presumably.”

Bucky nods as well, and his own smile begins to form. “Um...she’s married. To another woman. Her wife’s name is Jen. She’s a teacher. And she works at an after-school program for, um, "disadvantaged" kids."

"Well they sound like a pair of absolute sweethearts,” Pepper grins. “How long have they been together?"

"Something like eighteen years now. They got married October 6th, as soon as it was legal for them. They live in Indiana." It had been a euphoric day, he realizes, for both him and his great-niece, several states apart and for different, but not dissimilar, reasons. "And they have a daughter, Rikki. She’s six; she's in the first grade.”

“Oh, is she adopted?”

“Um. I don’t know, actually.” Pepper nods, telling him it’s fine that he doesn’t. “She’s named for Rebecca, for my sister. Apparently they were really close, her and Kim.”

“That’s so nice,” Pepper says, perfunctory but sincere, and Bucky gives a small nod. “Do you have a picture of them?”

“I _do_ ,” Bucky says, clearly delighted with that fact, digging into the pocket of his sweat pants for his phone; Pepper waits patiently as he brings up the picture and hands the phone to her. “That’s Kim on the left.”

“Oh, wow,” Pepper says, as she regards the picture: an outdoors, overhead shot probably taken on a selfie stick. Kim’s coloration is a very light tan; her hair is medium brown, parted in the middle, and hanging long and straight; and warm brown eyes look out from within the frame of epicanthic folds. Squished up beside her is Jen, her skin and eyes dark brown and her hair a chin-length cascade of black coils parted on one side. Rikki stands between and slightly in front of her mothers looking like God made her just for them; Kim’s eyes with Jen’s skin and hair, though her own coils are styled into rows of braids at the front, and left free starting at the crown of her head. “Bucky, what a beautiful family.”

“Aren’t they?” Bucky beams. 

Pepper admires them for a few seconds more before handing the phone back to Bucky. “So are you in touch with anyone else?”

Bucky pauses for a moment, his smile sliding off his face, and then shakes his head. 

“Have they said they don’t... _want_ to be? Outright?” 

“Not outright,” Bucky says, a reluctancy to admit as much as a relief. “Not to me, at least. But they know...at least _some_ of them know that Kim talks to me. Scott does, her brother does. She’s told me he says hi a couple times. But aside from that, they haven’t...”

“Have you?”

Bucky shakes his head, and then looks thoughtful before Pepper can continue. “Well. I did write to _all_ of them, at first. I just...haven’t tried again since then. And they haven’t. Y’know. Made the first move. Second move.”

“Except for Kim.” Bucky nods, and Pepper takes a sip of her coffee, considering her next move. “So are you...going to give up, with the others? Or are you going to try again?”

“I dunno.” Bucky shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “I don’t...I get _why_ they wouldn’t want to...”

“They’re missing out,” Pepper interrupts, before Bucky can go too far down that road. “I mean it!” she insists, when Bucky looks skeptical. “My parents liked you.”

“I was barely a person when I met your parents.” It had been a total accident; unaware that Bucky was being moved into the Tower that same day but acutely aware that their daughter had only narrowly escaped getting shot from three thousand feet in the air, Jude and Amanda Potts had surprised Pepper with an Easter visit. Their paths hadn’t crossed for very long, but apparently he’d made an impression. 

“So imagine how much more likable you are nowadays,” Pepper parries effortlessly, but her gaze is narrowing a little, focused on the middle distance. Bucky fiddles with his coffee cup while he waits for her to put together the finer details of whatever plan she’s obviously cooking up. 

“You do still _want_ to meet them all, right? If I were to, say...issue them an invitation to the New Year’s Ball, would that be all right?”

Bucky sets his cup down. “You’d do that?” 

“It’s not like it’s any _trouble_ ,” Pepper says, waving her hand dismissively and taking another sip of coffee. “I’m thinking that a high-profile, and at least _somewhat_ neutral, setting might help, is the thing,” she says, once she swallows. “Having other people around,” particularly an easily-armed superhero like Iron Man, “will probably make them feel more...comfortable.” 

“Maybe.” Pepper cocks her head at his tone. “Well we—me and Steve and Peggy—we weren’t planning to...” _have the whole world up our arses all night. We gave that interview and that is quite enough_ “...actually _be_ at the party.” 

“Well, you don’t strictly _have_ to be. Your family, your sister’s family that is, can always excuse themselves from the party to go upstairs and visit you on your own floor. Next time you speak to Kim you can let her know that you’ll just be in the building, not at the ball proper. And she can pass that information on to the rest of them.”

Bucky bobs his head from side to side, shifting on his hips along with it. 

“I know it’s not a particularly great plan,” Pepper says; there’s always the possibility that even if the Proctors showed up, any of parties involved would chicken out and wind up spending the entire evening a few floors away. “But it _is_ an excuse to get them here, and in a less...in a more secure setting, with less pressure.”

Put that way, it seems at least plausible. “I’ll ask...I’ll see what Steve and Peggy think.”

“I suppose I should run it by Tony, too,” Pepper laughs. “I doubt he’ll have a problem with it, though. Just make up your mind either way ASAP, okay? I’m sure at least some of them would have to ask off work.”

“I will.”

Pepper reaches out, patting his hand and briefly squeezing it as she stands up, her coffee clutched on her other hand. “I should head back up to my office now, but feel free to call my desk if you decide what you wanna do. Or just ask JARVIS to get my attention.”

Bucky nods, and tries to smile confidently. “Thanks, Pepper.”

“My pleasure, Bucky. I hope it works out for you.”

"Yeah, same," he laughs weakly.

She pats and the squeezes his shoulder on her way out the door. Bucky fiddles with his coffee, and then his phone, and only barely has the presence of mind to dump the almost full cup in the sink and rinse it before he rushes back up to his suite.

*

“Well, they’re certainly trying very hard to get us there,” Sandra says, mild and neutral, the invitation held limply in her hand.

Amy paces the room in haphazard lines, her and Scott’s own invitation held with a weird sort of reverence in both her hands. Martin sits in the recliner his father had used to reside almost permanently in, chin resting on his fist; Scott has his place on the couch, holding his phone. 

Jen had responded to the phone call asking them to come to the family meeting with “We’re going.”

“Kim says that they’re not going to be at the party,” Scott reports, looking up from his phone. “Him and his...Captain America and Agent Carter. They’ll be on their floor.”

“And how does Kim know this?” Martin asks, resigned, rhetorical.

“Dad...”

They expect Amy to leap in now, brandishing something cold and biting about Scott being accessory to Kim’s stubborness, but instead she continues her agitated wandering, looking at the invitation every few seconds. 

“Apparently he’s a normal enough guy,” Scott continues, emboldened by his wife’s silence. “He hasn’t, ah...given Kim and Jen any reason for, for pause.”

“You think Kim’s judgement can be trusted, Scotty?” Sandra asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“She’s a pretty good judge of character, Mom,” Scott says, a little pointed. “I mean, I’m sure she’d be happy to show you their conversations so you could see them yourself.”

“Has she shown _you_ them?” Amy finally asks, stilling. 

Scott briefly considers lying, but the bullet’s between his teeth and he might as well bite it. “I’ve seen a couple.”

“And what’re they like?” Martin asks, when Amy still seems distracted. “What’s he got to say?”

“I dunno, Dad, they’re regular conversations. They talk about, you know, Kim and Jen’s work, how Rikki’s doing in school, that sort of thing.” He pauses as he remembers, tilting his head back. “He asks about Grandma a lot.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. What she did with her life, what she was like. If Kim remembers Grandma talking about...anything she did when she was a kid.” Martin nods, giving a quick bite to his lower lip. “I mean, from what I’ve seen, he doesn’t seem unstable. Seems kinda soft-spoken, if we’re being honest.”

“Still, if he’s not being...properly looked after...” Sandra says. 

“I know he’s in therapy. He did mention that to Kim at least once.”

“So what are you saying, Scott?” Amy asks, surprisingly less accusing than they expect her to be. “Do you... _want_ to meet him now?”

“ _I_ could go either way,” Scott says, putting up his hands. “I’m not champin’ at the bit to go to New York. I’m just saying he might not be as... _concerning_ as we originally thought.”

Amy bites the inside of her cheek and looks down, tilting the invitation so she can read it again.

“Ames?” Scott says, after a moment. “What’re you thinking?”

She releases an aggravated breath, blinking angrily up at the ceiling. “I’m thinking that it’s the _Stark New Year’s Ball_.”

“So you _want_ to go...?”

There’s more put-upon for Amy to sigh out, and louder this time. “I don’t know, Scott. I’m not...all due respect to Kim, but she refers to _wild animals_ as her _fur-babies_. I think her perception is a little skewed. And you know Jen will believe anything just to spite me.”

“And Tony Stark’s perception?” Scott asks, careful not to sound too challenging. “He’s the one issuing the invitation, technically.”

“He’s not the most...stable of individuals, himself,” Martin points out.

“I doubt he’d _purposely_ put us in danger, but he might do just that anyway,” Sandra tacks on. 

“Exactly,” Amy says, resuming her pacing. “But at the same time, this is the _Stark New Year’s Ball_. My boss would kill me if I passed this opportunity up. And I wouldn’t blame her.”

“Well.” Scott’s phone is buzzing with messages from Kim that he’s doggedly ignoring for now; he sits back against the couch cushions. “You _can_ go without seeing him...”

“Yeah, but I think the expectation is there, Scott.”

“Well yeah, Ames, obviously this guy really wants to meet us, but he’s the one saying that he won’t be at the actual party. He’s giving us an out, if...”

Amy flounders for a moment, and when she sighs this time, it’s finally a little shuddery. “If I could get a, a _guarantee_ that we wouldn’t have to...that we could avoid him, I would feel better.” She scoffs. “Not that we can check that box off on the RSVP...”

“...So...” Scott says, after a moment of quiet. 

“So let me think, Scott,” Amy snaps. “Could you do that? Let me think?”

Scott frowns at her in response, and she turns away, worrying the invitation in her hands. Sandra opens her mouth, and closes it again, looking at Martin helplessly, begging him for something to cut through the concrete quiet.

He obliges. “Sandy? What are you feeling about this?”

Not quite what she wanted. She puts her hands up deferentially. “It’s up to you, Marty. I’ll go along with whatever you decide is best.”

Amy turns towards him suddenly, her face hard in an uncertain way, and he meets it with a purposely sideways glance and upturned chin. As much as he doesn’t agree with Jen often, Amy is, after all, not the head of this family. 

“I’ll think about it.”

*

There’s a line between being rightfully protective and being invasive. Steve tries very hard, every day, to mind the placement of this line. This can’t be treated like Bucky exchanged one handler for another. It’s not only Bucky’s right to handle his own affairs and interpersonal relationships as he sees fit, it’s necessary for his recovery, and it’s been made very clear to Steve and Peggy that they have to support him in that. So when Bucky poses Pepper’s idea to them, and seems inclined to pursue it, they agree to it.

It’s just also gut-punchingly hard to see Bucky start favoring soup and Jell-O for sustenance again, turning down anything heavier than jarred peach slices and even then, sheepishly refusing the syrup they come in as too thick to drink. He does, at least, perk up whenever Kim or Jen message him, and his appetite comes back for a little bit; one evening Rikki FaceTimed with him for a few minutes, until she heard her inna’s voice and hung up before she could get in trouble for using the phone without asking again, and Bucky actually cooked a full dinner that night, with spices and everything. But the longer he goes without hearing from the rest of the Proctors, the more often he decides that he’s full to bursting after he’s eaten maybe a dozen unsalted almonds, and the longer it takes for him to get out of bed every day. Thanksgiving would have been a total wash had Bucky, obviously feeling guilty over this relapse, not insisted they at least watch the parade.

The Proctors have a right to be wary, Steve also—almost forcibly—reminds himself. The Winter Soldier is a terrifying apparition, one that got very close to killing the considered-basically-immortal Captain America, and they’re not around in Bucky’s everyday to see him scooping out the cats’ litter boxes and making them run up the walls chasing a laser pointer. 

So when Bucky’s phone rings two days after Thanksgiving while its owner is in the shower, Steve _does_ hesitate to pick it up. 

He glances around instinctively, but Peggy isn’t here to near-telepathically bounce any ideas off of; she’s been called out on a mission (and she’s very excited about it; she’s meeting Bruce somewhere in India and has taken the zoomorphic with her, in case it’s an area where the presence of a tigress wouldn’t be amiss). The screen only gives a number, no name, so it can’t be Kim or Jen, and Bucky hasn’t given anyone else his number, so unless one of the other Proctors have, then...

 _You can just say that he’s indisposed and he’ll call them back_ is the thought that makes Steve reach for the phone midway through the third ring. And if they’re calling to turn Bucky down, or something worse, well, Bucky doesn’t need to hear that directly. 

Steve isn’t Bucky’s handler, but lovers protect each other.

“Steve Rogers speaking.” He makes sure to use his firmest, most commissioned-officer-in-the-US-army voice. 

It’s one that Martin recognizes, and is, strangely, almost grateful for. This call feels bizarre enough already; at least there’s a minimal chance of bullshitting being tolerated, from either end. 

“Hello, yes. This is Martin Proctor. I’m...well, I’m guessing you probably know.”

“Rebecca’s son,” Steve says, a little flatly to show that he’s currently unimpressed with the man, and because the fact is still so painfully strange to acknowledge.

“Yeah.” Martin clears his throat. “Can I speak to my...to James Barnes, please?”

“He’s indisposed,” Steve says, grateful to have that line ready. “I can give him a message and he can call you back in...maybe...fifteen minutes, if that’s all right?”

“Ah...”

This might be better, Martin thinks. He’d gone to Kim and—carefully, since Jen was there—asked her to show him the texts she’d exchanged with her great-uncle. Scott was right, they did seem normal enough. More than that, they were friendly; clunky with newness, but weirdly comfortable. The former greatest Hydra asset was also, apparently, very fond of cat-face emojis. And cats themselves, if that one video clip was anything to go by. 

But then again, written communication was premeditated. An impromptu conversation would be a little more useful for guaging the man’s actual state of mind. 

But now that Captain America picked up the phone...he isn’t like Iron Man. He doesn’t have clumsy incidents like the 2009 Stark Expo under his belt, or a well-documented history of alcohol-soaked regrettable instances. If the Winter Soldier isn’t up, or safe, for human interaction, then he probably isn’t going to be dishonest about it. 

“Well, we got that invitation to the Stark Ball, for New Year’s,” Martin says. “I’m assuming _he_ was the driving force behind it. My...my uncle.”

“He _did_ ask that you be invited, yeah,” Steve says, trying to parse Martin’s tone before he gets testy with him. “He’s, ah...he’s very eager to meet with you.”

“Mmhmm.” Martin pauses. “I know he’s in touch with my, with my daughter. She...speaks well of him.”

“Good. That’s great; Bucky enjoys talking to her. She’s good people.”

“Yeah, we’re kinda fond of her, too,” Martin laughs. “She’s apparently looking forward to...going to New York.”

“Oh, so we can expect her.” Despite himself, Steve lets himself relax, and smile, a little at that news. Bucky will be ecstatic. 

“...Yeah. Yeah, her and Jen and Rikki.”

That feeing was short-lived. “Should we expect anyone else?”

There’s a long silence, punctuated by fortifying and somewhat aggravated short exhales. “All right.”

“Hm?”

“I’ll...I’m gonna level with you, Captain. I need to know...is he...how is he with...people?”

“He’s fine.” _They don’t know him._

“He told Kim that he’s not going to be at the actual party...?”

“We—he and Agent Carter and I—we don’t like,” he almost says _crowds_ , and he feels like that’s the worst thing he could say, “we don’t really enjoy events like that. We’d rather...we’re looking forward to a...a smaller gathering.”

“Mmhmm.” There’s another pause. “I’m sorry, I know you’re probably not...not that thrilled to be speaking with me like this, but you...you understand, I _have_ to think about my family first. We can’t go into this, a meeting like this...blind.”

“I do understand.” Intellectually, at least, if not viscerally. 

“So I’m asking you, and I need your honesty...if we were to come to this party, and meet with him...would there be problems? Of any...of _any_ kind.”

“No.”

The answer is a little too immediate, too defensive, for comfort, but the finality of Steve’s tone is at least a little mollifying. 

“None at all? And I don’t mean just for, just for us. Is _he_ —”

“He is more than ready to meet Becky’s family.”

 _Becky_. No one’s called Rebecca that since her own parents died some forty-six years ago, when Martin was twenty-two years old. 

“I see.”

From around the corner Steve can hear the shower turning off, and as much as the nervous feeling in his gut urges him against it, he has to ask. “Bucky’s gonna be free in a minute. If you want to talk to him. I’ll put you on hold, let him know you’re waiting.”

“All right,” Martin says, sounding a little dubious, and Steve feels much the same as he presses the Hold button and sets the phone back down. 

He grabs the softest thing within reach—Peggy’s oversized, polyester bathrobe—and a pair of underwear, and he catches Bucky just as he opens the bathroom door, hair dripping wet and wrapped in a towel. 

“Martin’s on the phone,” he says before Bucky can even ask, holding the clothes out to him; the wide-eyed, joyous look on Bucky’s face as he grabs the clothes and hastily dresses is almost enough to offset the growing anxious pit in Steve’s stomach. He follows slowly when Bucky rushes into the bedroom, choosing to stand in the doorway and watch as Bucky clumsily grabs the phone and almost fumbles with taking it off of Hold. 

“Hello?” Bucky asks, and Steve’s breath curls into a ball inside his chest. 

“Hi, Martin,” he says, shaky with relief, after a moment, and even as the nervous— _scared_ —feeling in his stomach grows, Steve permits himself to breathe again.


	3. Color in the Cold Grey Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, boo, I didn’t get to finish by the end of last year. Maybe by the end of this year!

"Are they here?"

"Well hello to you, too, darling," Peggy says, cocking her eyebrow at her husband's somewhat out-of-breath form looming in their doorway. She's taken up residence on their couch, already dressed in a sparkling silver top, sleek black capris, and complicated- and somewhat dangerous-looking heels. Her make-up is almost stark in its black eyeliner/red lipstick simplicity, and her hair is pulled back in a severe ponytail, the way Pepper might arrange herself if she knew that she was going to need to strongarm someone in a board meeting that day. "And no, they haven’t even landed yet."

"Okay. Good." Steve pauses, then clears his throat and pulls himself together enough to kneel on the couch and pull Peggy into a proper kiss in greeting. He'd been summoned a few days ago for what he had been assured was an open-and-shut mission, and after seeing Bucky's face when he nonetheless told Steve it was okay if he went, he had ensured that it was. "Where's Bucky?"

"Bedroom," Peggy says, tilting her head and hand towards that particular doorway, mild frustration evident in her movements. "He can't decide what to wear."

The corner of Steve's lip twitches. The uncertainty wasn't much like the Bucky of old, but the concern with his appearance certainly was. "Guess I should get changed, too."

"Well, I don't know," Peggy muses, glancing him up and down. "You certainly look quite commanding the way you are now."

She waggles her eyebrows at him, and while he laughs it off he knows what _else_ she's getting at. "Gonna go more for Captain _Rogers_ tonight, Peg. He's a little less..." cartoony? _Accessible_ , maybe. The whole point is to let Bucky have the Proctors' focus. And to keep them well-behaved. Kim's family had kept up their communication with Bucky, but aside from Martin's call none of the others had reached out to him directly, preferring to use Kim as their go-between. Jen had also informed them that Amy was not thrilled to be joining her husband and in-laws in New York, and that she could be... _I don't like this word bc its misogynistic and gross but she's a huge c**t. fair warning._

Peggy nods and hums, glancing down at her dazzling but cool outfit to express her solidarity with his vision, and Steve kisses her again before he pads up to the bedroom and, carefully, since he doesn't know where Bucky is in relation to it, open the door.

However nervous Bucky is about meeting his family, it’s momentarily superceded by his relief that Steve came home safely, and Steve finds himself with a pleasantly tight armful of Bucky.

"I was told you were having trouble?" Steve says, after a moment of toying with Bucky’s hair. 

"You can inform Peggy that I _have_ chosen at least _one_ thing to wear,” Bucky mumbles into Steve’s shoulder.

"Yeah, something of mine," Steve says gamely, and indeed Bucky's pulled on one of Steve's tan-colored slacks. The rest of him is still unclothed.

"Sorry," Bucky says, not picking up on the light tone.

"Oh no, my best guy's wearing my clothes, what a hardship," Steve tries again.

Bucky looks up at Steve with the same look a dog wears when trying to parse if his human has offered to take him for a walk. Steve holds his breath, wracking his own brains for what might have grabbed Bucky's recall; there's a vague recollection of doing laundry at Uncle George and Aunt Win's house, and Steve swimming in far-too-big clothes that he had pilfered from Bucky's room (as opposed to his own, only-just-too-big outfits) so he could get all his clothes washed at once. If he recalls correctly, they stopped paying attention to the laundry at some point.

Bucky knows that he's grasping at something real by the look Steve is giving him, but Pancakes wanders into the room and bunts her head against his shin, and the pressing need to find a suitable shirt reasserts itself, so he lightly sighs the need to establish certainty away, and stoops down to scratch her head and back before returning to the closet.

Steve places himself beside Bucky, pawing through the row of shirts. After their DC apartment was trashed while Bucky was still in the hospital, Sam, Natasha, and Sharon had done them the courtesy of picking out new clothes for all three members of Team America. Not knowing Bucky's sizes, and reasoning—correctly—that he wouldn't be making many public appearances anyway, almost all of Bucky's clothes are pajamas or only a few steps thereabove, with some jeans and casual henleys thrown in for him to wear to doctors' appointments. Not that Steve and Peggy don't appreciate seeing their boyfriend most frequently enveloped in soft, comforting things, but they're not the clothes worn to impress strangers this important to him. Steve eyes a dark purple button-down he'd briefly considered for himself, and then unceremoniously plucks it off the bar and holds it out for Bucky to take.

"Yeah?"

"It's a good color on you, and it'll look nice next to Peggy's silver," Steve says, ever the artist. Bucky steps away, to pull it on, leaving Steve to pick out the closest match to olive drab he has. Captain Rogers indeed. He'll wear his other pair of tan slacks, too, so he and Bucky can look at least somewhat like a unit.

“This look okay?”

Steve throws his own outfit over his arm and turns his head to look Bucky over. Bucky’s fluctuating appetite has been reflected in his weight, and the shirt is a little big on him, but—to Steve’s gratitude—not too badly. 

“Yeah. It’s cute; it looks like you borrowed it from your boyfriend.” Bucky makes a silly face at him, and then glances away; Steve follows the gaze and sees it land on the vanity. He hasn’t seen Bucky sit there in what feels like a long time. “You gonna do your face, Buck?"

“...I don’t know.”

“Why not?” Steve asks, after a beat of schooling his voice to the correct tone. 

Bucky chews on his lip; looks down at his hands. “Because it’s...I don’t want to...”

“It’s not a bad—”

“No, I know it’s not a bad thing,” Bucky says. “But it’s...” The laugh he gives is short, and wet, and shaky. “I guess it’s not as off-putting as me being the Winter Soldier. Or it shouldn’t be, at least, but...I don’t want _them_ to be...even more off-put.”

Steve presses his lips together, wrestling with his sympathy and his already irritation-tinged reservation about the Proctors, pinning the mess down so he doesn’t come across too firm. 

“Buck, you want them to see _you_ , right? The real you?” Bucky nods mutedly, and Steve seizes the idea that comes to him. “The _fun_ you?” He reaches out with his free hand, sliding his fingertips across Bucky’s cheek and into his hair. “The _turns heads_ you?”

“Come o~n,” Bucky protests, but he’s barely holding back a smile. 

“You know what _I_ want to see?” Steve presses, and Bucky mutters his curiosity almost shyly. “The _happy_ you.” Bucky glances up at him just in time for Steve to lean in and press a kiss to the corner of his eye. “Getting dolled up makes you happy, Buck. If a relationship with them’s worth _anything_ , it won’t bother them.”

Bucky knows that Steve was a little apprehensive, at first; not sure whether Bucky’s interest in makeup was a newfound coping mechanism, something he half-remembered Hydra putting him through, or something that had been inside him all along; and that he had struggled with the implications of all three. It had been like pulling teeth, Steve working up the nerve to ask, and Bucky to admit, that there was a part of him—“like...a quarter of me, maybe, just...something, some amount”—that didn’t just appreciate femininity but _felt_ it, in his bones, in his soul. Steve—and Peggy, who despite being the first to put makeup on him was starting to get retroactively unnerved about it—spent an already sleepless night googling the phenomenon, and upon concluding that it wasn’t a sign of anything worrisome, got to work getting over the cognitive dissonance. 

Bucky leans forward, planting his face against Steve’s neck for a moment, before nuzzling it briefly and tilting up, to kiss the side of Steve’s jaw. 

“Love you, Steve.”

Steve seeks out his hands; squeezing them. “Love you too, Buck.” He loosens his hold just enough to feel the fine trembling in Bucky’s fingers. “You want Peggy to do it?”

“Yeah, might wanna get the expert in here.”

Steve goes to fetch her while Bucky slides into the chair, plucking Pancakes off the vanity proper and then mollifying her with some scritches well-placed at her tailbone. He’s struck with an idea as she hops off his lap, which he strikes Steve and Peggy with as they come back into the room: “I don’t know if any of them are allergic to cats.”

“I’ll message them,” Steve offers. “We’ll just put the girls away if any of ‘em _are_ allergic. And...vacuum real quick, I guess.”

“Turn towards the light, darling; Steve’ll take care of it,” Peggy says, standing in front of Bucky as Steve begins looking for Bucky’s phone. Normally Peggy’s fingers and brushes on his face are a calming sensation—a welcome alternative to electrodes, or the head brace of the electric chair—but his shoulders are halfway to his ears until he sees Steve find the phone from the corner of his eye, and even after they drop Peggy has to gently chide him to relax his face.

“No allergies,” Steve reports. “And they just landed. Headed to baggage claim.”

“Don’t squint,” Peggy orders softly, so Bucky clenches his hands instead. 

“JARVIS?” Steve calls. “Can you let Pepper know that Bucky’s family is at the airport?” 

“As you wish, Captain Rogers,” is the dutiful reply. 

“All right, I’m gonna hop in the shower; rinse off before I get dressed,” Steve says, stepping in the direction of the bathroom. “I’ll be right back out.”

“Miss Potts has contacted the chauffeur,” JARVIS says, as Peggy and Bucky wave Steve off. “She’s requested that he be in touch when all parties are safely in the car.”

“Thank you, JARVIS,” Peggy calls up to him.

“Pepper’s a saint,” Bucky murmurs, only barely moving his lips, trying to keep his face a blank canvas now that he’s finally gotten it smoothed out. Feeling responsible for the plan, having been the one to suggest it, Pepper had offered to coordinate the Proctors’ coming and going despite her duties to the party elsewhere. She had also made sure plane tickets for the Proctors were secured and paid for despite the late notice and holiday rush. 

“Pepper’s a friend,” Peggy corrects. “And she has assistants. Don’t feel bad.”

They’ve been saying that a lot lately. After their limp Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas had managed to be even sorrier affairs; Bucky had read up enough about the holidays to not only deem himself as unworthy of them, but to keenly feel the loss of his memories thereof, and the early attempts to get their suite into the spirit quietly, tearfully petered out in the first week of December. With Tony and Pepper in Malibu from the 15th until the 26th and the Bartons dealing with the move to Illinois, Steve and Peggy had wound up forgoing any actual celebration beyond a brief Christmas Day visit from Sam, and calls to Sharon and Michael and a few others. And the Proctor-Lloyds, of course, who passed on their greeting to the rest of the clan and, thoughtfully, had sent a card that arrived on the 26th. Since getting the card Bucky had been determined to cheer up, but then Steve went on a mission, and that turned into trying not to drag Peggy down too badly, instead.

“Doin’ my best.”

Peggy’s hand pauses for a moment, and then carefully passes over his hair, down to the nape of his neck and around the line of his jaw. He reaches up, gently grabbing onto her wrist.

“We know you are, darling.”

“And if, if today doesn’t go well,” he says in a rush, earnestly shifting forward in the chair to get closer to her, “I’ll...I’ll try not to...not to, y’know, backslide, again, too much.”

Peggy flicks her thumb over his mouth, a small smile forming on her own. “Whatever happens, love, we’ll be here, and we’ll be glad of it.”

She presses her thumb against his lips, shushing any argument, and Bucky kisses the pad of it. They let the gesture remain for a few seconds before they let each other go, and Peggy continues her work.

*

Kim, for the third time since entering the elevator, checks the mirror and smooths out her dress.

“ _Kimberley_. You are making me nervous.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, baby,” Jen says, reaching for her wife’s hand and keeping the withering look she wants to send Sandra contained in a side-eye. “Breathe.”

In Kim’s defense, it’s a long elevator ride. The floor they’ll be spending the night in is the 75th, just below the ballroom where the party is taking place, itself a floor beneath where Bucky lives, and even a building powered by an arc reactor has to take the affect of gravity on an unenhanced human body into account.

They count themselves lucky that it’s just them and the security guard that kept the other invitees out of the elevator. They’re liaising with Pepper Potts first—Amy momentarily snapped out of her bad mood to get a little excited at that news, which even Jen can’t hold against her; Pepper’s objectively something of an inspiration—and it had been deemed wise for them to meet her one-on-one. Consequently it’s only the security guard that gets to pretend he doesn’t see Amy chewing her lip, her arms locked in place across her chest; Scott flexing his hands; Martin fussing with his glasses and rubbing his temples. Only Rikki seems unabashedly enthused, her wide eyes taking in every new thing before she raises the kid-friendly camera hanging on a lanyard around her neck and takes a picture of it. 

She gets a posed picture of the guard a moment before the elevator finally arrives at its destination, and he gestures for them to follow him. It’s only a few steps, however, before the most recognizable strawberry-blonde in the world comes out from what looks like an office, her walk congenial but business-like. 

“You all must be the Proctors,” Pepper says, glancing over the group. “I’m Pepper Potts. I recognize you three,” she addresses the Proctor-Lloyds. “Kim, Jen, and Rikki, right?”

“That’s right,” Jen says, a little nonplussed. 

“Bucky showed me the picture you sent him,” Pepper explains, smiling wider, more genuine, as she shakes their hands one at a time. “He was adorable, gushing over you three. He’s very much so looking forward to meeting you.”

“Same,” Jen says, as Kim nods dumbly but obviously enthusiastically, making Pepper chuckle softly before sweeping her gaze, less familiar but still personable, over the rest of the family. “And you must be...Scott?” she addresses who she figures must be Kim’s brother, based on age. 

“Guilty as charged,” Scott says, with a laugh that’s obviously a little uncomfortable. “My wife, Amy,” he says, reaching over to touch her arm. 

“Big fan,” Amy says, with a professional laugh, making sure her handshake is impressively firm. 

“Well, I’m always happy to meet one of those,” Pepper responds smoothly, before looking at the last two members of the party. “Martin and Sandra, I presume?”

“Pleased to meet you,” Martin says, and then Sandra, both of them pretending they don’t see Pepper’s gaze flick briefly, confusedly, from Sandra to Kim. 

“So.” Pepper clasps her hands in front of her. “Thank you, all of you, for deciding to come. I can assure you that Bucky is absolutely thrilled to get to meet you all in person.”

“Same here,” Amy says quickly, since Pepper obviously likes Bucky, and it’s all Jen can do to refrain from smacking her across the mouth. 

It’s hard to tell by Pepper’s expression if she believes her or not. “Wonderful. That’s so great. Now, I’m sure he mentioned that he, Captain Rogers, and Agent Carter will not be attending the actual party?” There’s a collective nod and murmur of assent. “Good, good. So why don’t you take a few moments to unpack and freshen up, and then head upstairs? You’re free to stop at the ballroom first; the party’s in full swing, and there’s an open bar.” That nets her a ripple of soft laughter. “The ballroom is the next floor up, and the “America suite” is right above that.”

“Do we just...go up to the door and knock?” Scott asks. “Are we...getting announced, or...?”

“Old-fashionedly enough, we have a bellhop for the evening, and he will let them know when you’re coming upstairs. It’s not this same elevator,” she gestures to the one they just stepped out of. “When you get off at the ballroom, it’s about ten feet to the right. Got a man in red in front of it; you can’t miss it.”

“Are there...” Martin starts, before once more removing his glasses, cleaning them with the corner of his shirt, and putting them back on. “Ms. Potts. Are there any...rules for the evening? Things we should be aware of that...we might not already know?”

Pepper tilts her head, taking a moment to ponder how to answer the question. She knows all the weapons in the suite had been moved upon realization that an inquisitive six-year-old with grabby hands would be visiting, which is the only material issue she can think of. That leaves...

“Be...if you think something would be unwise to discuss, it probably will be. So discretion in that respect would be appreciated.”

Martin nods, slowly. The collective apprehensive knot only tightens. Amy can’t quite hide the breath she takes.

“Aside from that...nothing I can think of.”

“All right. Thank you.”

She flashes them a quick smile and the comes forward to hand them their room keys. There’s a murmur of gratitude, and Pepper poses just long enough for Rikki to snap a picture of her before she excuses herself and heads towards the elevator. Jen sends her sister-in-law the frostiest look she can muster once Pepper is gone, rolls her eyes when Amy snaps _“What?”_ at her, and herds Kim and Rikki towards their room.

“Why did you ask that, Scott?” Amy demands. 

“To be sociable, Ames.”

“Now they’re gonna be... _expecting_ us.”

“Honey, they already were.”

“You _know_ I wanted to...” Hide out downstairs, defering for the whole night with acquaintances she hoped to make.

“And you still can,” Scott says, putting his hands up placatingly. “I’ll even stay with you, if you want. I just wasn’t gonna let Pepper freakin’ Potts think that we’re only here for free cocktails, okay?”

Amy has no argument for that, but continues frowning anyway as she and the rest of the family split up to unpack.

*

“Are you gonna want a drink first, baby?” Jen asks, eyeing her wife’s trembling hands.

“I, um...no,” Kim says, tugging on the zipper to her suitcase to close it. “Wanna be...don’t wanna be sloppy.”

“I’ll get us some champagne,” Jen intuits, and Ken pretends to be annoyed for a moment, before she smiles gratefully. 

“Can I have some too?” Rikki asks, bouncing on the bed where she’s seated. 

“Sure, when you’re 21.”

“Aw~”

“Rikki, put your backpack on, sweetie,” Kim says, before she can start begging in earnest. “We’re heading up now and we don't want to forget our surprise for them, do we?”

Thus redirected, Rikki dons her purple plastic backpack with the pride of a lion hunter. Kim looks in the dresser mirror, and smooths her dress once more. 

They knock on first Martin and Sandra’s door, and then Scott and Amy’s, announcing their intention to go pretty much straight up; as expected, they’re not asked to wait.

The ballroom is packed when they stop into it, luckily enthralling Rikki and her camera enough to keep her quiet and relatively still as Jen squeezes through the crowd towards the bar. Kim has just enough presence to smile when Rikki excitedly points out that a giant Kwanzaa kinara is among the decorations, and to lift her daughter up so the girl can take a better picture of it. 

“Now remember, sweetie,” Kim says, while her mouth is by Rikki’s ear, “you gotta ask before you take any pictures _in_ the apartment, okay?”

“I _know_ , Ma,” Rikki says, mildly affronted, and indeed she’s been quite good about asking for permission to photograph people so far. 

Jen hugs the wall on the way back, making their reunion quicker than her departure, and they inch their way—they can see why Bucky and his partners would prefer their own private gathering, _yeesh_ —towards the elevator Pepper had indicated. Jen’s already finished half her drink, and she and Kim gulp theirs down together, handing them to a passing waiter before presenting their credentials to the aforementioned bellhop.

In the elevator, Jen wraps her arms around Kim’s waist from behind, humming an encouraging note as she drops a kiss on her shoulder. Rikki, busy looking at the shiny gold paneling, squeezes Kim’s hand almost instinctively until the doors open. 

“Here we go, baby,” Jen murmurs, as they step out of the elevator towards the door. 

Kim measures how much she wants to finally meet the family that’s been lost to her for so long, against how much the family she does have wants them to stay apart. The weight of the former pours into her fingers, making them close into the fist that she raises to knock on the door. 

She’s strangely observant for how suddenly adrift her head feels. The door opens a little jerkily, like the person on the other side is just as nervous as she is. Bucky is a little taller than she was expecting--he had seemed so small in the October interview--and she tilts her head up without even thinking about it. His hair, longer than she remembers it being two months ago, is pulled back loosely, so she gets a clear view of his face, and while she vaguely notes that his lips look painted, it’s his eyes that really catch her focus: gray blended with blue, rimmed with short, inky-black lashes. 

Just like her grandmother’s. 

She wants to stare at them for hours, but they fade out of view almost immediately when they're replaced by blurry tears, and then the hand she brings up to bury her face in. 

“Oh _Kim_ , Kim, baby,” Jen croons, rubbing her thumb between her wife’s shoulder blades. 

“Ma, don't be sad!” Rikki says, tugging anxiously on Kim’s other hand. “Don’t be sad! It's okay!”

“I’m not, sweetie, I’m not sad,” Kim pulls herself together enough to say, letting go of Rikki to furiously and somewhat futilely wipe at her eyes with both hands. The man before her looks ready to cry as well; his face is splotching dark red on his cheeks and around his eyes. The clouded-blue has a watery sheen over it. “I’m just...I’m sorry.” 

Her hands trip forward clumsily, brushing at Bucky’s hands before she manages an awkward hold on his wrists. 

“You don’t...I’m so sorry, this just...” She tucks her face into her shoulder, hastily rubbing away a fresh crop of tears. “This, this just means so much to me, I...” She lets go of Bucky’s wrists, to let her hands hover near his elbows. She can feel how cold his left arm is, but not enough to make her even come close to caring. “Can...I’m sorry but, can I...?”

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes, somehow. “Yeah, Kim, of course, if you want to—“

Kim hugs like Rebecca would, Bucky remembers suddenly; tucking the side of her face into the meeting of shoulder and collar bones, arms squeezing tight in a flat circle around the ribcage. He wants to let her go even less than she wanted to stop studying his eyes; he only does it when Kim suddenly grows shy and lets herself fall back on her heels, and where she was immediately turns cold. 

Not for long. Jen shifts on her feet to catch Bucky’s eye and, with an awkward little laugh, opens her arms to Bucky similarly. 

“Good to finally meet you in person.”

“You too,” Bucky says, somewhat choked-sounding. He can hear Steve and Peggy greeting Kim behind him, and Rikki trying valiantly to get any adult’s attention; she sees an opening in Bucky once Jen releases him, and comes close to bowling him over when she launches herself at him, throwing her arms around his waist. 

“Hey Rikki,” Bucky says, smiling down at, and carefully patting, her hair. “Thanks for calling me, kiddo.”

She squeezes him, quite pleased with herself, and then draws back so she can attend to more pressing matters. 

“Can I see your cats?”

Bucky turns his head when he hears Peggy laugh. He quirks a watery little smile at the slight teariness informing her eyes. Even Steve looks a little pink-faced. 

“I suppose we _should_ invite you all in, shouldn’t we,” Peggy continues, stepping and pulling Steve back to make room for the Proctor-Lloyds to file inside. “I'm afraid that the kitties are very shy, Rikki. They’re hiding right now. They’ll come out when they’re comfortable, and you can play with them then.”

Rikki is too distracted with taking in her surroundings to pout vocally, and her mothers are not too far off. They hadn’t quite known what to expect out of the apartment beyond spaciousness, and what they’re met with...

“Art Deco?” Kim asks, clearing her throat. 

Captain America is _grinning at her_. She wants to fly, faint, and sink through the floor all at once. “More or less. You’re, uh, familiar...?”

Kim blushes slightly. “A little. It’s, um...painting’s sort of a hobby of mine. All kinds of painting. Including, um, interior...interior design.”

“She and Scott did our whole house when we moved in,” Jen puts in. 

“Well my brother did all the important stuff; I just decorated. I was gonna go for something more modern, but then I thought old-fashioned would be...nice.”

“Same,” Peggy says, and Kim’s flush deepens. 

“The color scheme’s actually pretty much the same as your great-grandparents’ place,” Steve says, gesturing with a sweep of his arm, and Kim and Jen follow his hand around the shell pink living room to the cheery buff-colored dining room that opens into it. “Well they had _more_ individual rooms at their place, but we matched it up; living room for living room, kitchen for kitchen, that sort of thing.”

“We thought it’d help,” Bucky says, leaning into Steve’s side; Steve automatically puts an arm around his shoulder. “With, y’know.” He taps his head with a finger. “Me remembering.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kim asks, a little dumbly.

Bucky nods. "And it...it does, a little. It does help."

“That's good. That's great, I...I never saw it, I never saw...they, um, I was born in ‘75; my great-grandparents, all my great-grandparents, had already passed. And no one lived in New York by then, by the time I was born; no one in the family.”

“...Well, it’s still there,” Steve says, when Bucky can’t. “Their place is. Someone else _lives_ there now, but maybe, um, you’ll want to walk past it tomorrow. When it’s light out.”

“Maybe. That sounds nice, yeah. Maybe, yeah.”

“In the meantime, we could show you around _our_ place?” Peggy swoops in. “Obviously most of the furniture is different, but you can get some of the idea...”

“We’d love that,” Jen says, taking her wife's arm.

“Can I take pictures?” Rikki asks, brandishing her camera. 

There’s a pause. Kim and Jen try not to look at Bucky, until they see Peggy doing so. 

“...Yeah,” Bucky says eventually. “Yeah, we don’t...got anything classified here, anymore.”

Steve huffs, and squeezes the arm he’s slung around Bucky’s shoulders. 

Rikki takes the invitation liberally, only vaguely following the adults around as she photographs anything that catches her widely varying fancy...and there are many things. Winifred Barnes—suddenly moneyed upon her marriage to George, and already mother to a toddler who was just starting to figure out what colors were all about—had gleefully splashed bold and happy hues all over her home, and the recreation was indeed quite faithful, from the light purple living room drapes to the dark blue rug spanning the kitchen floor. The two bedrooms, on the other hand, are slightly more subdued, but still painted a lively light green that almost completely matches the walls of Bucky’s childhood bedroom. 

“I picked this color out,” Bucky says, a little proudly and drumming one of the walls with his fingers, when the group peeks inside the rooms. “I didn’t...really _remember_ ; Steve and Peggy showed me the paint samples and it just...felt familiar.” He runs a hand through his hair, tugging lightly on his scalp. “That’s how it works, mostly. Something’ll... _feel right_ , first, and then I’ll start getting actual...actual memories after. Hopefully.”

Kim nods, keeping her expression appropriately somber, keeping down the anger that anyone would deliberately steal a person’s whole life from them like Hydra had done to Bucky. She almost reaches up, to pat his arm, but Bucky shifts closer to Steve and Peggy, and she averts her eyes and takes a respectful half-step back instead.

"This is, um, this is Steve's studio," Bucky says once he's able to switch gears, stepping forward to push that door slightly ajar, and reach into to turn on the light. “Notice how it's predictably in red, white, and blue.”

“Uh, excuse you, Barnes," Steve says, flicking Bucky's shoulder. "It’s in _mulberry_ , _pearl grey_ , and blue.”

“Apparently my out-of-laws had a library in these colors,” Peggy murmurs close to Kim and Jen’s ears as Steve and Bucky continue to quibble, Rikki giggling at the display. “We’re waiting on Bucky to remember it,” she adds, even quieter.

The other women nod, and Jen has to smile a little; she had referred to the Proctors in much the same way, prior to getting her signed and stamped marriage certificate in mid-October. “So did _you_ have, um, any say in what the apartment looks like...?” she asks, keeping her tone good-natured.

“Oh, I was who suggested we do it this way,” Peggy says. “I thought it would help. And so much was going on when we moved up here, we were so... _distracted_ , it was nice to just...have an idea of what we’d do ready to go.”

“I can imagine,” Kim says. 

Peggy almost says that she couldn’t possibly, but thinks better of it, opting instead for a smile that’s grateful for the sympathy. 

They’re shown the bathroom—“Probably the most useful information to you,” Steve jokes, and Rikki somehow finds something about the room engaging enough to snap a photo—before wandering back to the living room and being bade to sit, allowing them to more fully take in the space. There are a couple couches scattered across the room, all plush and warm yellow; one facing the television, one situated close to the window—the same couch Bucky had been sunning himself on when Peggy joined him, just a few moments before Eddie Brock took their picture—and a third...

“Something amusing you?” Peggy asks, tilting her head at the sight of Kim suddenly grinning.

Kim flushes and ducks her head, but gestures towards the old-fashioned radio near the corner of the room. “Sorry, I just...”

“Oh God,” Steve sighs, fondly for all that. “Becky told you about the Radio Extravaganzas, didn’t she.”

“Guilty,” Kim says, looking like her words. “She said it was a lot of fun, at least...?”

“For _her_ , maybe,” Steve grumbles, as if he wouldn’t go back in time to put on pretend dramas behind the radio in the Barnes’ parlor with Bucky and Rebecca in a heartbeat.

“I’m pretty sure it was fun for me, too,” Bucky says at Steve, loudly, with just a tinge of wistfulness. “That’s just a feeling that I get.”

“My brother and I did something like that, too,” Kim says, absent-mindedly helping Rikki up into her lap. “But for us, it was a busted old TV instead of a radio. Scotty gutted it so it was just the frame. We'd put it up on a TV tray at Grandma’s house when we'd go visit her. She was," Kim allows for an amused-sounding noise, "pretty much the only one who had the patience to sit and watch us put on our _programs_.”

“Karma, I’m sure,” Peggy muses.

“Sometimes I could rope Dad into watching us,” Kim continues, before trailing off into the stillness otherwise permeating the room. The absence of the other Proctors, a scent that had followed them through their tour, now smells much more pungent.

“Ma?” Rikki says, leaning her head back dramatically so she can attempt to look at Kim.

“Y-yes, sweetie?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Oh, we’ve got, I’m sorry, we’ve got a snack tray, I’ll go get it,” Bucky says, quickly ducking back into the kitchen. “Chicken’s almost done!” he calls, once he’s inside the room and can think to look inside the oven.

"Oh, we have, uh, a roast chicken and potato salad for dinner," Steve informs their guests. "If you, y'know, we figured you'd want to eat something."

"I do!" Rikki says, throwing up her hand like she's answering a question in class.

“We’ve plenty for, what was it, ten people?” Peggy says. “If they’re, if the rest of your family is hungry.”

"We should probably check in with them," Jen says, shifting on her hips in a slightly pointed way. "Babe, you wanna text them, see if they're ready to eat?"

“Oh, um...sure, yeah, everyone's probably hungry right about now," Kim says. "I'll...I'll let them know we're sitting down to dinner now..."

It still takes her a moment to fish her phone out of the purse she’d left on the couch at Steve’s invitation, and for a beat afterwards her thumb hovers over the Messages button, while she tries to mentally compose the best way to beg her family to come upstairs. 

*

**Kim**

_We’re having a very nice visit so far. They showed us around the apartment. It's painted to look like GGrandma and GGrandpa’s old house :)_  
_They’re going to be serving dinner in a few minutes. Chicken & potato salad. Join us if you’re hungry?_

Martin lowers his phone, and glances up at Sandra. She’s been nursing a glass of White Zinfandel—though not the same one—since they came to the ballroom, sitting with him at the bar, making stilted conversation with each other and the bartender whenever he’s not otherwise occupied.

Sandra had felt her own phone buzz, but had left it to Martin to respond to the message.

“They’re eating dinner in a few. Kim’s asking us to join them.”

Sandra nods, and sips her drink, taking all the time she can until she feels she can’t reasonably stall any longer. “What’re you thinking?”

Not much of anything really cogent, and not because of the beer in his hand, the bottom of which he circles against the countertop. “I'm thinkin' it’s...thinkin' it’s what we came here to do, isn’t it?”

Sandra shrugs, just slightly more than indifferent.

“Time to let curiosity get the better of us, huh?” he attempts at humor, taking a swig before he can see her make an even feebler attempt at an amused smile in turn. “And I could eat, if they're offering. The pigs in a blanket ain’t exactly hitting the spot, you know?”

“Whatever you want, Marty.”

Martin wills his eye not to twitch. For the first few years after the war, into the early 80s, he had despised that phrase and the mouth that spit it out, almost as much as the man it was aimed at. As much as he had since trained himself to adjust to it--he wasn't in much of a position to tell Sandra what she could say to him--there’s still a Pavlovian twinge of resentment that he hopes doesn’t often show on his face.

It does. Sandra finishes her drink. 

“Well. Let’s find Scott and Amy, then.”

Amy’s engrossed in conversation when her parents-in-law track her down. Someone she worked with in Paris is actually attending the party at Stark’s behest, and Scott’s been standing supportively by, nursing his own glass of some dark red wine, while the two catch up. Martin and Sandra catch his eye from about five feet away, and Scott raises his hand, holding his phone, to wave them on. 

Just as well. Amy’s got a way of spoiling appetites when the mood strikes her to do so, and tonight the mood would probably punch her full in the face.

*

“Mom and Dad’ll be up in a minute,” Kim calls, so Bucky can hear her; after depositing a tray of pickles, olives, cut celery stalks, and—to actually appeal to someone Rikki's age—crackers with cheese slices on the coffee table between the TV and the couch, Bucky had gone back to the kitchen to start putting dinner together in earnest. After a silent conference with Peggy, Steve had gone with him, leaving his wife to properly entertain their guests.

“All right, thanks!” Bucky calls back, refraining and, with his eyes, asking Steve to refrain from inquiring about the activities of remaining two absentees. 

Steve glares at nothing and everything in response, opening the cabinet next to Bucky loudly. 

“Steve, it’s okay,” Bucky says under his breath. “I get it.”

“I don’t like this... _staggering_ bullshit they’re doing,” Steve retorts, pulling a drinking glass off the shelf so the glass scrapes the wood. “It’s a _visit_ , it’s not a...”

“Steve.”

“It’s inconsiderate as all hell, is what it is," Steve continues, angrily gathering more glasses. "And what’s with them putting Kim and Jen in the middle like they have been? Do good manners skip a generation or something? Because I can promise you your sister would never’ve pulled a stunt like this.”

“Look, Steve, it’s..." Steve passes Bucky briskly, not looking at him. "I’m a lot to take in, okay? I _know_ this. Eight months, okay, not even a _year_ ago, I was—”

“You _had_ a better family than this, Buck.”

That brings Bucky up as short as if he’d stepped on a rake. Steve stands at the table with his back turned to Bucky, his movements jerky as he distributes the glasses to their seats. Bucky watches as, when the task is finished, Steve rests his hands on the table for a moment and breathes out once, short and heavy, before he can turn back around, and when he does Bucky reaches for his hands and pulls Steve unceremoniously into his arms.

"Buck--"

"Steve. I'm sorry."

"Hell are you sorry for," Steve mumbles, the ferocity dying with every word, and Bucky slides both his hands up into Steve's hair, getting as much of a gentle grip on the short strands as he can.

"Just give 'em a little more of a chance, okay?” Bucky whispers into Steve’s ear. “It’s a lot for them to deal with. They could...they can still come around.”

“Well they _better_ ,” Steve mutters, allowing himself to squeeze Bucky’s sides just before a knock on the door cues them to separate.

Through the entryway they can see Peggy stand, and they meet her en route to the front door. Kim and Jen stay on the couch, but sit up higher and straighter to watch; Kim’s hand twitches, and Jen grips it tightly. 

The shock of seeing them is there but somehow different than the shock of seeing the Proctor-Lloyds. The new visitors stand half a foot further away from the door than Kim’s family had, their bodies maybe angled away just a bit, like they’re more prepared to leave. Martin must favor his father, Steve thinks, because he doesn’t look much like Rebecca save for the hair; dark where it isn’t sprinkled with aged white, thick where it isn’t bald. 

“...Hello,” Martin says, after he realizes that he's not making proper eye contact and then establishes it. "Mar-...Martin Proctor. We, ah, spoke on the phone...?"

His attempt at mirth is met with a small smile, but the connection is lost even as he holds his hand out towards Bucky. Martin searches Bucky's face just like Kim had, but it's not the eyes that have drawn his attention so much as the mascara and the barest hint of eyeliner highlighting them. Bucky saying "It's great to finally meet you, Martin" draws the man's attention to his uncle's mouth, and his eyes can't help but widen at the dusky, cosmetic pink decorating his lips.

The pit that's been waiting in Bucky's stomach opens up, and he releases Martin from the handshake with some haste, looking and leaning away, towards Sandra.

This time it's Bucky's eyes that widen a little, but he quickly schools them into something that accentuates a bright smile, and reaches for his niece-in-law's hand. "Hi, Sandra, it's nice to meet you."

Sandra nods, her lips parting as if she wants to say something, and closing as if she can't think of anything. She glances over at Martin quickly, and whatever cue she's waiting for Bucky misses, when both Steve and Peggy put their hands on his back and he turns his head to look at them.

"Please, do come in," Peggy says, mustering all the grace Amanda Carter had tried valiantly, and only half-the-time-successfully, to breed into her. "We're just about ready to sit down to dinner."

"Thank, thank you," Sandra finally manages, and Martin murmurs something to the same effect as they cross the threshold. Bucky closes the door behind them, turning inward immediately to share a three-way glance with his partners.

Intellectually, they know that genetics can deal wild cards. No one who didn't already know would ever have guessed that James Barnes was not the natural son of George Barnes, whereas Steve had inherited nothing from his paternal grandmother besides her high blood pressure and unflagging pride. 

Viscerally, it's difficult to see how Martin and a blonde, green-eyed, button-nosed woman like Sandra could possibly have given life to an indisputably Asian daughter.

She could be adopted, all three suppose at roughly the same time, as Kim stands to properly greet her parents. Kim said she was born in '75; they're caught up with enough post-war history to know a few, vague things about Vietnam beyond the fact that DumDum had, at Hydra's hands, died in it. Kim could very well be a war orphan that Martin and Sandra had--

Kim pushes her hair back, away from her face.

Steve had asked Rebecca to model for him more than enough times for him to see that both Kim's ears and her hands are clearly inherited from her grandmother.

Jen catches their eye from the couch with a muted gesture, and slides a finger up her lips for the briefest of moments, before she uses the same digit to scratch some manufactured itch on the side of her nose.

"All right," Bucky says, before he can think; all eyes turn to him, and he quickly shoves the shock away, to make room for a smile he hopes isn't too strained. "Who's, uh...who's hungry?"


End file.
